So you want to know how I’ve gained success in my lending career? I’ll spill my secret recipe, but I won’t sugar coat it.
The first key component, for me, has been the management team at Quontic. It’s very important to know that Quontic has an extremely experienced mortgage management team, namely Steven Schnall, Quontic’s founder and CEO, George Lazaridis, our Mortgage Lending Division President & Chief Lending Officer, and our Chief Innovation Officer, Patrick Sells, along with the management team on the operations staff. They planted the seeds of knowledge that have helped me get to where I am, and where I plan to go.
I think of my relationship with the management team at Quontic as, almost, parental. The culture at Quontic implores me to innovate, and therefore, succeed. I want to make them proud because they’ve helped me grow my career and my business. In turn, I want Quontic to be proud of me, and to be able to market the best loan officers in the country. My success is their success.
And something that comes with success in this industry is credibility. This is a people business. Relationships matter. It’s a traditional approach, and that brings me to my next point.
The second key component is a tried-and-true strategy: create a good team. When you’re a new loan officer, one of the things you have is time. When you become successful, you run out of time. That’s when you need to have trusted teammates on your side.
So, to anyone who is just starting out: Spend your time planting those seeds; cultivate and deepen your relationships. Find your business partners. Find your referral sources. Have lunch with them—it’s that simple to find out how to get business from them. Expand that network. If you have one good relationship you’re doing business with, for example, get business from their referrals. If someone you trust recommends someone they trust, your network continually expands. It’s an old-school process, but it works.
Now, COVID has, to an extent, thrown a wrench in this approach. It has created a contactless environment. Face-to-face networking is gone, so you need to be adaptable. Technology can solve some of those issues; technology can even present solutions you didn’t even know you needed, like cutting commute times and using different marketing platforms. But it’s something you’ll need to be aware of, spend some time researching, and keeping that research organized. I use Zoom calls because we’re still in the people business, and face to face meetings—even just virtually—are invaluable.
You do that, and you’ll go from $5 million to $10 to $20 very quickly.
