Tom Ninness Interview With Richard Milligan, Mortgage Recruiting Coach

Okay. Well, Richard, I, again, this is take 2.

Yes.

And I really appreciate the opportunity to, you know, get some time with you that I can share with my group of branch managers. And just to make a short introduction, I got a chance to connect with Richard on LinkedIn. Um, he is the president and recruiting coach for a company that he has, which is called 4C Recruiting. And, um, um, I was invited to a kind of a webinar kind of thing, and I was sold that I wanted Richard to coach me when it came to, um, recruiting. And, and I've been doing this for a long time. Out of the 37 years at it, 35 of these years have been as a producing branch manager or area manager or regional manager. And I was thinking back when I first started to, back in 1980, the company that I worked for was Fleet Mortgage. And the carrot that they used to wave at us was that if you could produce in 2 years, you could have your first branch. And didn't mean I could manage, but I could have my first branch after 2 years. And it was almost 2 years to the day that I was transferred from Schaumburg, Illinois to Phoenix, Arizona as a branch manager and really didn't know what my responsibilities were other than I needed to grow this branch. And I think things have changed over the years, and I have a heart to serve for those who become branch managers, is to do everything I can to assist. But I think it's important to hear from another perspective, and that's why I'm so excited that Richard has given me the opportunity. to interview him and so that he can share. And I've got a list of questions I'm going to be asking Richard. And Richard, why don't you share a little bit about your background and so the originators or the branch managers have an understanding that you've done this for a while?

Yeah, yeah, I have. So I started in this business— I say this business, I still— I'm actually running a recruiting company that specializes on coaching inside the mortgage business. So, I still consider myself in the business. But yeah, I was actually a loan officer, branch manager, producing branch manager, and eventually area, regional, and vice president over the course of about 15 years inside the business. But I ended up where I am today because I look back in the first 12 years in the business, I really struggled.

Recruiting.

And so my heart really goes out to what I call recruiting leaders. Those are people that sit inside a branch or are responsible for an area or region that have to grow, but yet we don't really provide them with much training. And I look back on the first 10, 12 years of my time inside the business and I just was horrible at recruiting and I just didn't give up on it. I just kept Just like a hard-headed person that I am, I constantly was banging my head up against it. But it took me 12 years of really making— of grinding it out to get to where I'd hired about 20 to 25 loan officers. And that's a long time. And when I looked at the amount of effort and energy I put into the recruiting piece, there was no correlation between effort and energy and results. And so about 12 years into the business, I went off the grid for a little over a week, turned off my phone, turned off my email, said I was going on a vacation. And really what I was doing was developing a plan to come back and to be a successful recruiter. And I took that week to just observe, right? Someone once told me, an unobserved life is a wasted life. And so I took that week to just say, what's worked? What hasn't worked? I had a big list of what hadn't worked. I had a very small list of what had worked. But it was one of those fail-forward moments where I took those things and then put them into what I call today the Recruiting Made Simple system. And then what came from that was I built 3 branches and hired about 20 to 25 loan officers up through almost 12 years. And then what would transpire in the few years beyond that, I'd launch 18 branches, hire well over 100 loan officers in the Recruiting Made Simple system. And so I'm so passionate about that piece. of it today. Really, my mission is to fill a void in the mortgage industry, which is this lack of recruiting training for the people that really want to build their branch, build their brand, and be successful in the area of recruiting.

That's great. So, let's dive into it. What are some of the hurdles that you are seeing producing branch managers experience when it comes to recruiting?

Well, yeah. So, you know, there's obviously some hurdles there. I think there's some advantages there. But when I look at the hurdles, I sat down one day and said, what all am I responsible for as a producing branch manager? And I came up with between 12 and 15 hats that I wore.

Okay.

If you go through what are they responsible for, I mean, not only are they responsible for, you know, managing typically the pipeline in the branch and the production, the growth, and the goal setting and the Team meetings and everything that goes into recognizing birthdays and their employees' anniversaries. And I mean, then there's an extension of that where they're the liaison to a lot of departments within the organization. So they may be the technology liaison, the HR liaison, and a lot of times even stuff like office manager, that's a hat that they wear. But if you're producing and you're trying to produce and wear all those hats, In the end, you just don't have enough time to recruit. That's the biggest thing that looking back that I would say, I never had enough time to recruit. I think I had this mindset of it takes several hours a day or maybe 3 to 4 hours a day to be successful and the non-producing managers, they have that time. I just don't have that time. It's the last thing, the last hat that we wear and because of that, we see very minimal success most people do just because that's the biggest hurdle. Now there's other hurdles around that that you have to walk through. Positioning in the market is so important because when you're producing and you're trying to attract other loan officers, you'll hear the feedback from a loan officer. They see you as a threat because you're marketing to real estate agents and builders and financial planners and they're doing the same thing. And so they see that as competition. A lot of times they won't move towards a producing branch manager because they see them as a competitor. When in actuality, I mean, when you think it through, that producing branch manager has more tangible things that they can give because they understand the process, the workflow, the internal workings of the organization. They understand how to massage the pipeline. Those things are so important to being able to help people understand the culture and the and everything that goes into making deals happen within the organization, that the positioning of that is so critical. But a lot of times the producing branch manager doesn't understand that, doesn't position themselves well, and so they come off as a competitor versus someone who's actually a servant leader that has more tools probably than the non-producing branch manager when it comes to actually being able to help somebody inside the organization.

I still remember I interviewed with a company decades ago that, uh, they did not hire producing branch managers. You had to be a non-producing branch manager. And I used to remember what I said to the guy. I said to him, I said, well, what am I going to do all day? Um, so I, I, so, you know, I look at it as that You know, there's gotta be advantages for a producer, producing branch manager compared to somebody who doesn't produce because they're in the weeds all the time. They know what is going on. But one of the terms you mentioned was servant heart. And I'd like you to just talk through that a little bit because if you are just in— the, you just want the title, or if it's so you can get overrides, you're not going to do real well in this business because you have these loan officers who in some ways they're entrusting you to help them build their business.

Right.

Um, we don't, I look at it as we don't just get a loan officer, we're also getting his family. So I'd like you to touch base a little bit about having that servant heart. And how that makes you that much more successful as a branch manager.

Sure. Well, one of the things I'll tie this— this is an indirect correlation to the servant heart, but the person that's serving has stories about how they're serving, right? And so whether you're a producing manager or non-producing manager, either one of those has this ability to tell stories through the lens of them helping people. And that's a critical component because the advantage that you have in either one of those roles, if you understand the importance of storytelling, is that you can become a very powerful recruiter. So, what most people do, and this is the tendency where we don't really understand how to recruit well, is that we lean towards our own lens. And typically what that means in recruiting is that we look at compensation, we think about products, we think about our— The white gloves treatment that we get internally, maybe from our marketing department or HR group or whatever, and we begin to recruit to those, what we see as advantages. That's really all left-brain thinking. When you start talking about compensation, you start talking about products, even rates in the market, maybe where you have an advantage or you may have a disadvantage, you start talking about your CRM or the tools and tricks that you use to build your business, that's all left-brain thinking. And what left-brain thinking does is it puts them in a position to begin vetting you. And if someone vets you against your comp plan or against your product list or against the tools and tricks that you have inside the organization, there's always going to be somebody that's got a little better technology, someone's going to always have a little better rates, a little better comp. And so if you teach them that they should be looking at vetting you Sure. Then that's what they'll do. But what great recruiters do is they lead with vision, right? And servant leaders have a distinct advantage when it comes to vision because they're all about serving, they're all about contribution, they're about these things that everybody wants to be a part of. Everybody sees the synergy in being on a team where there's a servant leader. And the servant leader has an advantage because they can tell stories about their leadership. So, how you recruit well is you become What I call the attractive leader. Okay, and the attractive leader represents 3 things. They have a clear vision. So if you don't have a clear vision, producing or non-producing, you start there. Right? Now some people will say, well, the organization has a vision. That's great. Now you need to own it because you can't steward a vision.

Right?

There are a lot of things we can steward in life, but vision is not one of those. You have to own vision. It has to be your own. And so where you can take the lens of ownership in the vision That's really critical to being the attractive leader. So, vision is important, being able to articulate the vision is number 2, and then living in accordance with that vision is number 3. And if you're doing those things, now you have phenomenal stories to share. And storytelling is everything in recruiting. And that's why, to some degree, the producing branch manager has an advantage because their stories that they tell around the intricate workings of the organization, an underwriter who stayed till 9 PM. to make sure that a deal closed on time. That's an incredible story that talks about culture, that can move people emotionally. Sharing stories about how you're impacting your community, how the people in your branch are being impacted, those are all stories. And storytelling, if you're not telling stories, all great visioneers tell stories. In fact, I've looked and studied visioneers. The average visioneer on the low end shares 10 to 12 stories. when they're casting vision. On the high end, some visioneers will share 50 to 60 stories. Now, they're micros. They'll talk about a person or a time or event. They're very micro stories, but powerful storytelling is what makes for great recruiters and the servant leader who is also, whether they're producing or non-producing, can use that to their advantage.

That's great. One of the topics I'd like to talk a little bit about is many of those that are Going to be listening to this recording, this is the first branch that they have ever been a branch manager for. And so not only do they keep up their production, but they have to build up a team of originators around them. What are the 5, 6 things that they should, they should do, or they could do during the day that only takes a few minutes that would help them start that process of building, recruiting, starting to connect with originators? What are some of those things that you would suggest?

Yeah, let me— I'll jump in front of that. Let me give you a filter to put all of those through, because, okay, I am in my own life at times I've been the P90X version of Richard, which is like, I want to I want 90 days to accomplish this life achievement. I think the P90X mantra is the— something to the life, the body you love. I don't remember what it is. I don't want this mindset of let's do this quickly. I want to bump it up against this filter of is anything that I'm going to say I'm going to do, is it sustainable? Because when I look at my own life and I look at successful people, the one thing that they do is sustainable activities. Right. I mean, the older I get, what I realize is that the tortoise actually does beat the hare, right? In that, in that, in the story that we've known since we were kids, you know, about this slow turtle that actually beats this fast rabbit. In real life, the truth is that the tortoise does sustainable activities. They'll do them again and again and again. So when you're talking about activities and what you're going to do in recruiting, make sure they're sustainable. I'd rather see a small micro change that you can sustain for the next year and now it's an actual behavior modification long-term, there's more success that will come from that. So sustainability is key. The other thing is this, is identifying seasons in your life. Because if I say I'm going to do this for 90 days, there's certain things that I can do for a season that I can't do for the entire year. And so as an example, if I have 4 kids, there's certain things during the school year Where that's an advantage because the kids aren't always home, they're not always available as they are in the summer. So I might be more likely to plan a season, a really extended season of growing my recruiting efforts if it's during the school year versus over the summer. So I always look at seasons and try to quantify a season where I can contribute more and then hit a finish line with that. And the last thing that I found has been really successful for people that are really trying to To do the right activities where it's more behavior modification, trying to develop new ruts in their life is what I call sprint. So this is the 3rd S. And the sprint is I could go off the grid for a Friday and a Saturday morning. And so if I get all of Friday and half of a Saturday in and I'm not answering my phone, I'm not responding to email, I'm not in my office, I might get more done in that day and a half than I might in an entire month. Just because I'm focused on doing one thing or building out one idea. And so, the sprint is a really important component that I found has been successful for people that are trying to really prioritize and then protect what they're prioritizing. So, if you're doing those things, then there's some— there's a couple of critical behaviors. One, you always have to be identifying talent. And there's a number of ways you can do that. If you're unsure of how to identify talent in your market, a very simple tool to do this is with Zillow. Go to Zillow, hit the lender reviews tab, mortgages lender reviews tab, it's going to pull up everybody in your market. Zillow is going to automatically locate you and pull up all of the reviews for mortgage lenders that are closest to you. You can go through that in the course of maybe 30 to 45 minutes, develop a top recruits list.

Okay.

So, I want to always be identifying talent and I want to always have a top candidates, a top recruits list. That's the basic behavior That anyone who's going to grow their branch is going to do. We're going to identify talent. And then beyond that, then you're going to create a process of what I call the jab, jab, jab process. So, a lot of us that are recruiting leaders in a local market, we have the mindset that a corporate recruiter has and it's the wrong mindset. We think that constantly asking people to coffee, constantly asking people to lunch, connecting with people via email or LinkedIn or text message and immediately asking for a meeting, That that's the right behaviors. And the truth is that it's not. You have to jab before you have a right hook, and those are right hooks. And so what happens is that candidates become— these recruits become professional duckers because we're all about throwing the bomb. Like, can we get together? They get asked that multiple times throughout a week. The local leader is different. They're fishing in a small pond. The corporate recruiter fishes in the big pond. They're also coming up against some interesting dynamics, which are they're recruiting against people that they actually see at networking events. They see them at Realtor Board of Meeting events. They see them at chamber events, whatever. We see these people in the market, so we have to recruit a little bit different to protect some of the integrity around those relationships. So, how you do it correctly is you do it through jabbing. And what jabbing is, is I'm going to give you some contribution of value before I ask for anything in return. And so a great place to do this, Tom, is to do it on LinkedIn because it's an incredible tool and we're really in the zone right now where I would say LinkedIn is the sweet spot to show who you are as an attractive leader, right? And so a great behavior, one of the things you should add to your list is you should be documenting something in LinkedIn that you're doing every single day. Like every single day, if you held a sales meeting, if you presented in front of a group of real estate agents, if you had a great conversation with One of your loan officers. All these are things that you're already doing, so simply take a moment and document it. And if you document the things that you're doing daily, what you now are doing is representing that attractive leader that we talked about, has a vision, can articulate their vision, and acts in accordance with their vision. Now you're just saying, I'm acting in accordance with being this servant leader, with being this attractive leader. So LinkedIn's part of those behaviors, and you have, you have to incorporate that into it. But we ended up talking about moving into LinkedIn because we're talking about the jabbing. So anywhere you can contribute value before you actually right-hook somebody, you're moving yourself in the right direction. Now ultimately, it can be difficult to always provide value before you ask somebody to lunch. And so if you're identifying talent and you're actually getting at least 3 pieces of information about them, Which if you look on Zillow, typically you got a bio, you've got a cell phone number, and if you're not sure if it's a cell phone number, you can use a tool called searchbug.com and go there and enter that cell phone number and see whether it's actually a landline or a cell phone. Only call cell phones. The quickest way to build a hurdle in a recruiting relationship is to call them at the office. And so, you know, now get another piece of information. They've got a cool website. They have some information on LinkedIn about themselves personally. I'm going to use these pieces of information that when I call them, I'm going to warm up this call so it's not a cold call and me just asking for a meeting. I'm going to actually use that information and say, I was doing some research on you. You look like you're somebody that I would love to meet based on these things, like you're a family person, or I see your bio says that I've used this before. I see that you are a telemarketer. Your bio said you're a telemarketer. I can totally relate to that because I spent 5 years as a telemarketer. It was one of my first jobs when I was in college. And I can engage in a conversation that's not all about me trying to move you to a meeting, warm that call up, create some alignment with who they are as an individual, who I am as an individual, and then move them to a face-to-face. So if you're identifying the talent, you're keeping this top recruits list, you're identifying 3 things about them before you make a call, you're making that call, and then beyond that you're doing some things in LinkedIn to represent an attractive leader, then you're doing some basic things that you can do in a matter of 15 to 30 minutes a day that if you duplicate that day over day and you're the tortoise, right, you're— and over the course of 250 working days or whatever's in this year, then you will see significant success just based off some of those basic behaviors.

Yeah, I totally agree everything that you said. And, you know, for myself, um, you know, I, I utilize what is called the OP factor and it's using other people's knowledge or wisdom, but when it comes to recruiting is, That it doesn't really even matter. I could be somebody at my church, and if I share with them what I do, and, and, and then I'll ask them, is that, who did you do your home loan with and what kind of person was that? I mean, I'm always trying to, to get more names, more, you know, and let's say it is from somebody from, from church and he says, yeah, this guy was incredible. Then at that point, I'll ask, can I reach out to them and use your name? So it's, it's also utilizing anybody and everybody, you know, and letting them know, um, that you're looking to grow your business or grow your branch. And don't be surprised that— I guess I am just— you never know who is going to be your next recruit and where it's going to be coming from. I was just working out about 3 weeks ago and I told somebody what I did and that I'm always looking for great loan officers. And sure enough, She reached out to me on LinkedIn and gave me the name and contact information. Now I'm not going to hire this guy, but at least I got a name to swing at. Yeah. So yeah, it's very important.

Yeah, agreed. There's, yeah, MI reps, right? MI reps, your own loan officers, um, your entire network. I mean, I mean, I've got a lot of good friends who've done loans before they came to me asking for names, like who did your loan? Yeah, there's a lot of ways to identify talent. So that's good.

Right. Where do you believe that branch, especially new branch managers, where can they sharpen their skills when it comes to leadership? I know for myself, when I read the book, um, 7— or was it 17 or 21? I think it's 21 Irrefutable Laws by John Maxwell. Um, that was a very important book for me, especially I still remember the first The first law was the law of the lid.

Yeah.

And, you know, the crux really is that your branch or your leadership is really going to either raise the lid or stop the lid of the growth because you are just not— because of your leadership skills. Any thoughts about books or for those that are new as branch managers can can learn a little more about leadership?

Sure. Yeah, it's interesting that you bring up leadership because recruiting, and this is— I've studied this over a lot of branch managers producing, non-producing, but great leaders are great recruiters and there's definitely a connection between the two and that's why I always go back to being the attractive leader and representing those 3 things. A lot of people don't understand how to actually come to having a vision. So, you know, there's really— I call them the 3 C's of vision. There's the creating vision. That's the part where you're really deciding what do you want your vision to be. The second part is finding clarity in it. Now I'm beginning to talk about it, share it with people, put it on my mousepad, paint it on a wall, put it on a sticky note, whatever. And the last part is we are able to actually cast it very clearly, and that's the visionary status that we all want to be. If you can become a visionary, The visionary is going to be ridiculously successful recruiting. And the reason why, this will kind of come back to like where should you start, the visionary is a phenomenal storyteller and they're able to engage stories around their vision. I call them anchor stories. So I encourage a manager or recruiting leader to have at least 4 anchor stories in their presentation to recruits. And that takes people through that moving away from the left-brain thinking to right-brain thinking, which is now I'm engaging emotions, I'm engaging heart over head. But I'll give you a good book is— actually, I've got one right beside my desk. And so an example of a good book is one that's got dog-eared pages and a sticky note in there and things that's kind of crumpled and bent up on the edges. But here's a great book. Daniel Harkavy with Coaching Champions wrote one called Becoming a Coaching Leader. And I highly recommend that book if you're trying to figure out a place to start with casting vision and even just planning around some of that. I know, Tom, you and I align in some of these views. That's a great book that someone can get their hands on and can start becoming a better visioneer, a better leader, and a better recruiter. And then anything else that lends you to becoming a better storyteller. So, you know, there's— if you can get your hands on, and I'll send you, Tom, as part of this, a great hour-long webinar that a guy by the name of Andy Andrews recorded. And so work on your storytelling skills, because if there's one thing in all of this outside of having a vision, become a good storyteller. If you do those 2 things, you're probably ahead of about 90-95% of most people that are going to be out there engaged in recruiting behaviors.

That's great. Yeah, and it's interesting. For those who are listening, Richard has been my coach now. I want to say we're now entering our 3rd month, and he emphasized the power of stories. And that's why those in Colorado are sharing their stories, their wins, how we knock maybe another loan officer off the pedestal and end up Um, now capturing a top realtor. All of these stories are so important, and it is important to have your own stories and share other wins of other people to be successful. Um, I wanted to go back to competing against branch managers that are non-producing, and all of ours are producing. So. What— how can our branch managers that are producing leaders, how can they utilize that as an advantage to recruiting compared to somebody who does not produce at all?

Sure. Well, um, so let's just go back. This is interesting. If we go back several thousand years ago, there was really 2 reasons why people would reside underneath a king or a queen or a kingdom. And it was protection and provision. So, if I resided underneath you as a king and you assured me that you would help provide for me and my family and that you would protect us, then I would serve you with everything that I had. We can fast forward, Tom, 2,000 years and I don't think that any of the basic needs at that level have changed. Now, we quantify them as something different, things like trust and loyalty. It's a little different today, but at the basic level, people need to be able to trust the fact that we're going to protect them and that they're going to have that provision. And so, for me, it goes to core values, right? If you go to core values, if we start talking about things like trust, trustworthiness, talk about loyalty, authenticity, integrity, those are all core convictions.

Right.

So, if you, as a producing branch manager, and we went back and I mentioned something earlier in this conversation, which was you have a very clear vision and articulate that well so that people really understand who you are. We want people to trust you. If people trust your core values and then you're able to share stories around those core values as to how you're acting in accordance with them, then people will move towards you because they'll trust you. And so, you know, the basic needs are no different than they were thousands of years ago. So, being able to tell people and articulate what are your core values, that's really, really important. When I take people through my Recruiting Made Simple system, the first thing that we start with, Tom, we start with core values. What are your core convictions? And a lot of times people have a hard time narrowing those down to 4 or 5, and so I take them through a process where I actually give them a core values chart. We actually have written out— It's about 75 core value purpose statements to help them gain clarity around that so they can get to a place very easily where they say, that's authentically me. And the more authentic it is about them, then the more passion they'll have about it. So those core values, core convictions, articulating those very clearly, that's going to be critical because we're all about building relationship when we're recruiting. It isn't about— this is a misnomer. A lot of people think— You've got great woo or you're a great salesman or you're just a great storyteller, man, those— a lot of people will say they're a great recruiter because they have those skills and that's just natural ability. The truth is that recruiting takes work for anybody. And so, you know, this is something that you need to be willing to work on, developing your vision, understanding your core values, being able to articulate that and being able to share it through storytelling. So I'll give you an extension of this. Here's a beautiful nugget for the people that are listening to this. It took me over a decade to figure this out. Like, if you want to present this correctly and you want to move people powerfully and get momentum in recruiting, there's basically 4 stages to present this in. So if you and I were face-to-face, Tom, the first thing that I would do if I was recruiting you is I would figure out your why. I'm going to do that through asking a lot of questions in the first part of our meeting. Probably spend 20, 30 minutes talking about you, like getting to know you, but that's really phase 1. And so when I get to the end of that and I am able to articulate in my own mind what your actual why is, the second part of this, I'm going to summarize it for you. And I'm just going to say, Tom, it's been great finding out about you and understanding kind of where you are and why you love this business and why you're doing what you're doing. Let me just make sure I connect the dots on why you're here and what's your larger why. And then I would summarize it for you and then one or two things will come from that in that second phase which is you'll either say, Richard, you're spot on, or you'll say, Richard, you're almost there, that's part of it but here's the other part. And either way that's a win for me because now I know your why because then what I'm going to do next is I'm going to transition to my vision. It's been great understanding kind of why you are where you are and why you love this business. Let me tell you a little bit about me. and tell you about my leadership and tell you about my vision and I'm going to go into that. Now, when I'm done with that, that's phase 3. Phase 4 is I know your why and now you know my vision, I'm going to create alignment. And so I'm going to do some things like future pasting. There's a couple of 3 really great future pasting statements that you can make. One of those is imagine you already having.

Right.

So if you told me your why was your family and And you adored your newborn grandchild and you wanted to spend more time with family and you weren't all about having to work 60 hours a week and my vision was in alignment with that, then I can come back to it and say, Tom, just imagine you already having a work family that was in alignment with your personal vision, your personal why. And I could explain to you what that would look like. So, I'm going to create alignment as the 4th stage or 4th step. And if you do those 4 things, You will have a lot of momentum leaving that initial recruiting meeting and will be able to create some powerful next steps from it.

Yeah, I totally agree. I still remember this one gentleman I interviewed a few months ago and we met at a coffee shop and I basically just brought a notebook and asked him a lot of questions about him and learned about his His son and what he'd like to do. And, and, and then we, when we started getting deeper, he goes to me and he says, I gotta stop you. He says, how come you haven't handed me all the, the New American Funding paraphernalia? And I said to him, I said, well, if, if I didn't like you, why would I give you all this stuff? Um, and, and that's something that I can email to you later on. It's, it's the same when I meet with builders. I just want to ask a lot of questions. I can always send them some additional information, but I think it is to get to know, get to like. And if it's somebody that you want to then take the next step, then at that point you can go deeper and share what you have or how are you going to help them with their business. But you got to get to know and like before you do any of that.

Right. Yeah, that's good. And that's so many people miss that, Tom. It's, um, Yeah, I mean, I hear— you wouldn't believe the number of times I hear even from that, there's no momentum coming from that face-to-face meeting and so there's some really weak next steps. And so, you know, if your next step is, I'll call you another time and see what questions you have about our meeting, that's not a powerful next step. So you really got to take them to this peak experience and help them see there's alignment with you and with them. And if that's true—

Sure.

Then I can actually move you to something like a local site visit where you're coming into my office and now this is my environment. I control it. I can stage it. I can create more momentum as I continue to recruit you.

Sure. We've been at this now almost 45 minutes. What additional advice do you have for producing leaders? Anything we missed?

Yeah, you know what, here's the truth about recruiting, Tom, is that the little things are the big things in recruiting. So, you know, I can, you know, things like being bold, right? Like if I told you go and be bold 5 times per day in the space of recruiting and you went and did that, you'd have some success in the space of that. You'd also have some momentum as you continue to act, you know, boldly in that area of recruiting and then over the course of a week, And months, over the course of a year, you'd have a lot of momentum doing that. So, the little things are the big things. Boldness is going to be really important. Being the attractive leader though is really everything and if you're not being that, you really start there. If you don't have the vision, start with the vision, create your vision, get to a place where you can articulate that vision and then you can build on from there but that's really where everything starts. where everything starts. Storytelling, you've got to become a great storyteller. You know this as well as me, the last piece of this is really behavior modification. The best way that I change my own behaviors, something as simple as going to the gym, if I'm struggling, is create an accountability partner. So, asking someone to meet me there at 5:00 AM and if I'm not there to call me, just the idea that someone's going to meet me there at 5:00 AM is enough to get my feet on the ground and get moving. And the same thing goes for recruiting. So where you've got multiple producing branch managers, where you know another producing branch manager needs to be recruiting, reach out to them and just say, will you hold me accountable? Hold me accountable for making sure that I'm going to do these basic behaviors. And will you meet with me once a week for 15 to 20 minutes and let me tell you my wins and let me tell you the things that I'm doing and hold me accountable for the really hard things of If you're not doing them, you've got to be doing them. Give someone the emotional permission to step into that, and little things like that are going to make a big difference.

That's great. Richard, again, I want to thank you so much for the opportunity where I could ask you some questions that I believe is very important for the branch managers that we have at New American Funding. And one of the things I'd also like the branch managers on this call is to get a chance to reach out to you or even get a chance to go to the webinar that I was able to go to and see maybe they need to look into coaching, recruiting coaching also, as I did.

Yeah, so they can— I hold webinars and they can actually get 90 minutes of really high-level content including things like a recruiting scorecard and there's basically 3 things that most branch managers miss in recruiting. I go over those in depth through a weekly webinar and so if you go to the website recruitingissimple.com and register for the webinar, you'll get access to that 90-minute free webinar that holds weekly, and that will give you a complete jumpstart on recruiting itself.

And that's recruitingissimple.com.

You got it.

Okay. All right. Well, I will also put that in the COVID letter to let people know on how they get a chance to listen to you for 90 minutes of great information. It got me fired up.

That's how you and I met, right?

Yep, exactly.

Yeah.

Well, thanks again, Richard. I appreciate your time. And I, again, I will be passing on your contact information to the group. And, um, you know, I really appreciate you. I can't say enough.

So I appreciate taking the time to, uh, to go through this with me today and, uh, look forward to talking to you soon.

All right. Thanks again. All right.

You got it.