How Does The Mortgage Recruiting Leader Manage Their Time?

Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan here with Four C Recruiting, and I want to talk about time management for the mortgage recruiting leader. And the reason why I want to talk about this is because in, in the time that I've spent working with hundreds of mortgage recruiting leaders, what I found is that time is typically the largest obstacle that you have when it comes to recruiting. So I took the time one day to just sit down, having spent 15 years inside the mortgage industry myself, and to say, how many hats did I wear as the recruiting leader? Now, the recruiting leader is someone who manages a team but is also responsible for recruiting. Okay. And so what I came up with is the average recruiting leader in the mortgage industry wears 12 to 15 hats. This means that I could hire somebody 12 or 15 times over to do exactly what you do as, as a branch manager, as an area manager, as a regional manager, or as a VP. So you wear a lot of hats. I get that. Now, I remember as a branch manager, one of the hats that I wore was at times a producing branch manager. So I was responsible for managing my pipeline. Beyond that, even as a non-producer, I was responsible for being the key liaison to that individual branch or to multiple branches for every department within the organization. So a lot of times I was liaison to technology, IT. I was liaison to HR. Every HR issue flowed through me. I was, I was the agenda setter for the weekly meetings. I was the agenda setter for the quarterly meetings. I was the one responsible for getting everybody to the sales rally. I was responsible for ordering paper and ink and toilet paper at times, and the list goes on and on. But as a producing manager, or even sometimes as a non-producing manager where you have experience producing, one of the hats that you wear is how do you structure deals? So I call you the deal putter-togetherer. If that was a term, it would be your term because you would wear that hat. And we could go on and on and on and on because a lot of you managers help present to real estate agents for your teams. A lot of you managers are responsible for setting goals for the entire team or with each individual person on the team. You're responsible for everything that falls underneath your umbrella. So that's 12 to 15 hats that you wear. What happens— this is what happens with most people inside this industry— because you wear so many hats, You don't get to see the forest because of the tree. The tree in front of you is who just walked in your office. The tree in front of you is who just called your cell phone. The tree in front of you is who just text messaged you or just emailed you 3 times saying they had a fire. Those are the— that's the tree that's always in front of you that prevents you from moving towards recruiting at the highest level. Now, because of that, one of the things I've done is I've really broken down recruiting So where people understand they can become successful recruiters in just 30 minutes a day, 15 to 30 minutes a day is all you need to become a successful recruiting leader. So that means that yes, if you time block correctly, then you will have success recruiting. Let me do the math. I like to structure my days Monday and Tuesday where I'm identifying talent, Wednesday and Thursday where I'm calling and making contact with talent. And Friday where I'm following up with talent. Okay. And there's specific behaviors in each one of those that I'm doing. But within those, you know, I have time blocking every single day. I remember being that recruiting leader who said, I've got big goals for this year. I'm going to accomplish those goals at all costs. And then my door would open and my phone would ring and my email would go crazy. People would text message me and I was being brought into so many situations. I just wasn't able to focus at the level I wanted to focus on recruiting. So I got smart one day. I had a cardboard box sitting in my office, was probably a laptop that had just gotten shipped to me for a new hire or something along the lines. Pull out my shirt, my scissors. I cut an edge off the box to make a cardboard sign, and on the sign I actually write, in meeting. Take a piece of duct tape and I'll walk out to my door and I slap it on the front door. And I thought, this is brilliant. This is time blocking at its finest. It's on my calendar. People can see it. They can see my Outlook calendar. And now Richard has a sign on the door and people won't come in. And guess what? People would come in my office and stand there and wait for me to get off a phone conversation or wait for me to do— to stop doing what I was doing so they could interject what it was they wanted to talk about or what it was they wanted the problem— what problem it was they wanted to be solved. So I got frustrated with that. Had a conversation with my wife about one of the things I need to get better at is time blocking and time management and managing my time in recruiting. Because as a recruiting leader, you need to understand there is no bigger return financially. There's no bigger return on the investment of time than building branches or building your branch. There just isn't. And the truth is that from a legacy standpoint, if you like me, get to a place in your career where you say coaching people Mentoring people, developing people is more of a priority than anything else. And it's where I find fulfillment, right? Then how you get more fulfillment is by bringing people into your umbrella. You get to leave a larger legacy as a leader where you're able to influence more people. Okay? And so it was critical for me. It was part of the thing that I really wanted was to develop and coach and mentor people at a higher level, which meant that I was going to grow my branch, my branches. Talked to my wife about it. My wife got really smart and she brought me this, which is a 30-minute timer. And so I created this really nice sitting area outside my office with a coffee table. And I thought, this is brilliant. I'll explain to people what this actually means and they'll understand it and they'll appreciate that and they'll respect it. So it's on my calendar. I'm still sticking the cardboard sign on my door. And now I have my little widget outside my door that's timing. How long is it going to be before Richard's available? And guess what? People would still walk into my office. They would still open my door. And so I got to a place where I said, I have to figure this out if I'm going to time block my recruiting efforts at the highest level. I went out in desperation, bought an easel board, a whiteboard easel board, and would set it in front of my office door. And at the top of it, I write, Richard is in a meeting. I write the time slot that I had time blocked. And I would say, if you have an issue, write it here and I will reach out to you as soon as I leave my meeting. And that finally became the physical presence of a whiteboard easel in front of my door, became the physical presence that ultimately led me to being able to recruit at the highest level and getting rhythm and routine and seriously time blocking and developing a system and becoming successful in the largest stage of recruiting. What I'm telling you is this. You have time. Okay, you're going to have to negotiate this with something as creative, probably something as creative and powerful as what I did. If you need to get offsite to do it, do it. If you need to put some obstacle in front of your door to do it, then do it. If you got to have a conversation with your team about the health of your branch and this being a key component to it and how they need to respect this, then do it. Okay, but what we protect, what is a priority, and that is true. We protect what is a priority. So where we don't protect our time and space in recruiting, then what we're saying is it is not a priority. So I encourage you to lean into this space, figure out creatively how do you have fun with this? How do you bring your team in alignment with this? The ones that do are the ones that are going to win on the largest scale. on the largest stage of recruiting. It's worth the effort to do it. That's my tidbit for today. Hope you found some value in this. Have fun with it because I did. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you.