Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode number 11 of Old School, New World, The Life of an Entrepreneur. I'm your host, I'm Mike Diaz. So in today's episode, we are going to continue on with the 30 steps. of success. If you haven't subscribed yet, my only ask is please subscribe and like so you continue to get notifications of every episode that comes out. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the links will be available on our IG page. This just helps us continue to grow our podcast.
to help others, to achieve the dreams that they're after. You know, I'm a big believer that it's so important to give back. And this is what we are doing with episode number 11 on the 30 Steps to Success, volume three. So we have covered six so far. So it's the CRM, the follow -up, sell the benefits, knowledge, sell yourself, be yourself, and ask effective questions.
In today's episode, we're going to be covering the next three, relationships slash networking, handwritten notes, and time management. Funny enough, the last two are sort of tied together, and I'll explain that to you as we go through. So let's start off with relationships slash networking. I will say I've been in the business 14 years as a broker, 31 years in the industry, in the financial service industry.
And one thing I wish I had done better, did a really good job when I was at the banks, TV in Scotia, probably didn't do it as well when I became a broker. And that's, you know, the relationship piece. And not only with clients and friends. But just sort of creating my relationship with my network, because I was what I consider or call a lone wolf. And there's a lot of different reasons. I'm not going to dive into any of that today with you guys.
But it was something that if I could go back to my younger self to work on those early on, and that's just because it helps you build out. What I'm now attempting to build is our brokerage, DNA Lending Group, the parent company of old school in the world. So the relationship piece, let's start off with, of course, one of the most important relationships we're going to have. And relationships are very much the best ships that you can find, whether that's friendships or even just your clients.
Those are important. So relationships, when it comes to our clients and our friends, you know, it's so important to make sure we foster the relationship, that we provide something that they will never forget. Because really, you know, in our business and some of the success that comes from a referral based business is having your clients and friends and to a degree, your referral partners be your biggest advocates.
You know, being your advocate, you know, it's easier said than done, but they really have to get to know you. And how do you do that? Again, it's to build the relationship. Sometimes, you know, it's funny. There's a misconception that, you know, you got to.
dive in and find out everything you need to know about the person that you're helping and serving at the very beginning but no you know relationships are grown over time just like think about when you're dating you know you're not going to you know find out everything about the person but it's important to gradually build and get to know them over time and you do that with small and big things you know of course at the beginning you're going to be open up You're going to be a little
more vulnerable. Maybe, you know, tell them a little bit about yourself. Ordinarily wouldn't, but you want them to get to know who you are. Big things can be, you know, maybe some wounds you may have suffered from as a child or something that you've identified and, you know, maybe something that holds you back. You want to be open. That's part of the vulnerability. Taking those steps. will help build the relationship you have with your client and your friends.
You know, friends, we say friends, you know, it could be acquaintances as well and fostering them and nurturing them is, you know, it could be something as simple as if you have a friend, you think about them for no real reason, except they pop into your head. But I find that works really well and they really love it is, you know, send them a text. Hey, Sam, I've been thinking about you. Just wanted to say hi, hope you're well. You know, something as small as that goes a long way.
But the key, Like we've talked about sell yourself, be yourself. The authenticity aspect of that step is you got to genuinely want to reach out and say hi for no reason. So that's really important. The other thing with clients and building the relationship, you know, what you can do is again, back to one of the other steps. So if you're starting to notice a pattern, they're all tied together, you know, so one leads to the other, the other one leads to another and vice versa.
And they go backwards in some degree. So when you're doing maybe a follow -up with your client, you know, through your CRM that, you know, they enjoyed a book or they were talking about starting a business. Do small things to continue to build on. Nothing to do with what you're selling as an entrepreneur. In our case, mortgages. It just has to do something with you. You took note. You remembered what came up.
You came across something and you found the time and you were willing and wanted to from here. Not from here. from here to let them know, hey, you know, I was thinking about you. I came across this. You know, that happened to me when I was first building out my brokerage late 2023, beginning of 2024. Certain individuals started to resonate with me. And I spoke to someone, Scott Peckford. In fact, shout out to Scott, if he's listening at all.
He randomly sent me a book called Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. But funny thing, how things line up, I was already thinking about things that was in the book. I read the book. It really accelerated. And what did I do in turn? I recently did it for an agent. I sent him this book. I sent it to a friend of mine who's in the automotive business. He started his own business, sent him the book, sent it to another entrepreneur who's an owner of F45 down on Lakeshore.
Because it's not that I was looking to get anything out of them. I was really looking just to share what somebody shared with me. And that builds on the relationship. So you never know when someone's going to come across and add some value. And that's the other thing, right? If you're looking to build on your relationship, clients, friends, personal, just be sure when you're reaching out in those ways, there's value you're adding.
And that's why it's so important when you're building relationships, don't be building them. Because you're hoping to get something out of them. You're only doing it because you want them to help. You know, you're expecting something back from them. The expectation of getting something back, to be honest, should be zero. You should never expect anything in return. Just, you know, gratitude, respect. You know, they don't even have to like you.
But, you know, the hope is they'll respect you because you're doing things with integrity. You're doing it from the heart. So those are really important to keep in mind as you go through building the relationships. And then, of course, relationships are tied to networking. You know, being a lone wolf, like I said earlier, for me, it was comfortable. And, you know, and I've said it's important to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and networking. So I was a lone wolf.
So I felt, oh, I can't go to these seminars or these presentations or these other things that were happening where networking takes place because I was on my own. Didn't want to do that, to be quite frank, until I started. And I know even more so now starting being a lending group. that it's important to get out there. That's how people get to know you. You know, you might see me and listen to me, but you don't really know me unless I'm putting myself out there.
You know, I'm at a trade show and I'm there, you know, talking about DNA Lending Group, what we represent, what our principles and values are. So networking is an important part in any real industry, especially the mortgage industry. We have a lot of amazing people that support us, that want the best for us. You know, you want to be surrounded by folks and colleagues that cheer you on.
that support what you're doing, that they lift you up, as they say, because those are the quality that you want to find in others as you continue throughout your journey in this mortgage industry. Now, it can be in any sales industry or any business. Again, Our podcast, Old School New World, is based to help encourage entrepreneurs to figure out certain things and things that have worked well.
So networking, whether it's going to the events that mortgage professionals of Canada have, whether it's a lender function, whether it's if you're with one of the networks. One of the annual events that they have, you know, a lot of the events that happen are across Canada, right? So sometimes it can be Vancouver and sometimes in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto.
You know, a lot of agents say, oh, you know, if there's a cost, you know, I have to go to BC or I have to go to Ottawa, I have to pay for a hotel and I have to fly a flight. Remember, the best investment you can make. is in yourself. And I have a philosophy about advertising. People spend all this money going to try and get new deals and try to generate leads. They go spend money on advertising, Google leads, whatever it is. That was never my philosophy.
I'd rather invest, whether it's in myself and my education and what I was learning and wanted to do, or the networking, going to events, or I would spend things on clients that I've helped and served. to show them my appreciation and how much I appreciate them and how grateful I am. Whether it's a small, we'll talk about hadn't written notes, whether it's a hadn't written note or whether it's a gift card, spend money there. You do that with enough clients.
Some people have an advertising budget of, you know, 15, 20, 25 ,000. You do that enough times with enough clients, you're going to spend that same money, but on the people that you already have helped and served. You know, why go chase for something that you may or may not get? When you can really show people how much you love them, how much you appreciate them, because they've really put food on your table. Because remember, in our industry, we're 100 % commission -based.
So unless we're closing out a transaction, that doesn't work out very well for us in the long term. So that's why it's really, really important to show that appreciation. So when you're going to these conferences and thinking, oh, I just don't want to spend that money, the $3 ,000 or the $2 ,500, whatever cost it is. Think about the reward you're going to get from it and the people that you will meet. Again, relationship slash networking is so, so important.
You might meet someone that's, you know, a private lender. But then, you know, two months later, you come across a deal that that private lender can actually help you help your client. But you wouldn't have had that relationship unless you decided to invest in yourself. I'm attending a conference, for example, in Montreal in the middle of September called Elevate. Good friend of mine, Surajan. Super great guy. I've known him for several years now. He started his first conference a year ago.
This is the second. And I'll be attending as a VIP. You know, I spent the money to go, actually bought two VIP tickets. Andy Elliott is the main person there, main guest. There's other lineups. But I'm excited about it, not only for the presenters and what I'm going to learn from them, but being around a group of like -minded people, networking, having a common goal, sharing ideas back and forth, sitting at the table.
Because without putting yourself out there, networking, building relationships, you will not have a seat at the table. So important to remember all that in terms of relationships and networking. Hopefully you took a little bit out of that, but it's a really, really important piece. In anything we do, again, whether it's in your personal life, you have to have strong relationships, your spouse, your parents, your children, those relationships have to be tight and strong.
Whether it's in your professional life with clients and making sure that they understand and feel you and they hear you and they understand that you have their best interests at heart. And then friends, meaning in the professional or personal, you know, you want to have those relationships be strong and as stable as possible because it'll elevate you and bring you upwards to where you want to go. So based on all we're doing, that would be step number seven. So step number eight.
Now, this one you might think is a bit wild. Handwritten notes. Yes, I still do them. Yes, I write them myself. You don't always have the handwriting, but you might have another way of doing it. But I think it is one of the nicest things you can do because, you know, in today's world, and this is why, you know, the podcast is old school, old school writing notes, new world. Everybody thinks it's all digital.
Why this is so important? You know, we have to remember the principles and values from yesteryear and how much impact they can still have today. You know, when you're helping and serving someone and you've done such a great job and you're asking for a referral, you know, you've called them for a post -funding call. Again, talk all about this in the follow -up. And then you manage to find the time and you want to from here, not here, from here, meaning the heart, not the head.
And you write a thank you card and maybe attach, I reimburse clients and friends appraisals as part of my thank you. But it's the handwriting that's important. Because remember, Canada Post, you're in Canada, so Canada Post, they're on strike. That means mail still goes around. Obviously, things get sent around Canada all the time. And one thing people will always, whether they're young or they're old, they always love to open something up. Especially if it has a message of thanks.
and appreciation and, you know, goodwill. They're always open to receiving it. And I'll give you an example. Again, back to you telling stories and you're trying to convey a message. When we were all in grade school, you know, Valentine's Day comes up as an idea. We used to, at least in my school, you know, we used to have Valentine's, Ray Dole, you'd be my Valentine. And then we'd pass around the class. Everybody loved that. We were young kids.
Sometimes you have to forget it's okay to be childlike. It's so important to remember that we're all big kids. And so when we were doing that exchange, there was a feeling that's created by going, doing back and forth. Some of you might have stories about, oh, you know, I liked Susie. I passed her up a note, passed it to my friend in front of me, passed it to her friend, passed it to her. It's notes, handwritten notes. So they go a long way.
You know, families that are abroad, globally for that matter, when does the most cards go out? Christmas cards. So they're saying, you know, Merry Christmas. We miss a lot of families put pictures of their families. They mail it out. That all comes through mail. You know, and they keep it. Some people still have, you know, nice, really old ones that keep, they put them on their tree.
Sometimes cards come, you know, my mom would do this quite a bit where our Christmas tree, she would put up and she would put the cards that would come from your relatives, friends and, and have it on the tree for the Christmas cards from yesteryear. So writing and putting together a handwritten, a note, showing your thanks and appreciation and just saying, thank you goes along with, they may never tell you.
Oh, you know, like that was a really meaningful card, but they don't have to because it doesn't matter if they do or not. Because back to you have to do it from the heart, not the head. You know that you're doing it because you just want to say thank you. And that alone is, I feel, you know, important to be in your everyday practice or, you know, keep on tying everything's into DNA, but it's in your DNA. You know, we are all born good people.
you know and so we want to make sure that we have other people feel what we're doing so it's a bit old school yes some people you know they say oh mike you know how do you find the time guys i help and serve anywhere between 100 to 150 clients now a lot of some are single like individual transactions it's a couple so let's call it out of the 150 let's run down let's just say 70 thank you cards like how do you find time to write the thank you cards this is a good lead -in to time management.
I just find it because I know it's important. It literally, guys, if you're closing 10 transactions a month, 20 transactions, you might be sending on average 12 thank you cards a day. Maybe you, in your calendar, okay, on this date, I'm running all these thank you cards. I know brokers that send their Christmas cards.
They pick out a day and they have all the ones that they want and they send it out for that's part of their, how they build rapport and connect with clients and show their appreciation. So you just carve out a bit of time to do the handwritten notes. Because it's funny, the smallest things sometimes lead to the biggest results. So something as small as three or four sentences in the thank you card can lead to greater opportunities and greater things that happen down the road.
In that card, you may want to reiterate, they really appreciate you. And if you have anyone you care about, we'd love an opportunity to help and serve them. You'd appreciate a referral. There's different ways, but again, it has to come from the heart. I keep on saying this. You'll find this episode talking a lot about the heart because these actions that we take to help and serve and to build what we're doing for others, we're in service. And so it always has to come from the right place.
So let's push into time management. Talk a little bit about that. For all the young entrepreneurs out there in any industry you're in, one thing that's really changed my business. And I'm just fortunate enough to have a great team around me. Melanie, who has started with me in 2018 as my associate, is now my executive associate. Sean, another amazing asset and amazing human for the business and myself personally. But they allow me to manage my time.
This could apply to men and women, but I know men. You know, I had to. And with Melanie, it was easier. I love Melanie to death. Everybody that knows me knows how much I love her. And she's the absolute best, my right hand. So blessed to have. It's one of God's wings, as I say all the time, that she came to me in 2018 via a good friend of mine who referred to over. She's looking for work. And just to show you that, you know, you don't have to be in the mortgage space to be successful.
She was working for TELUS, it was on mat leave with her first child, and then was looking for work, wanted to do something different, and then landed with me. So in her transition, once she had her twins, I needed to find something different for her because I couldn't expect her to be, you know, raising a young family and being an associate, which revolves essentially the underwriting piece, following up the clients, document collection and such.
So through Scott Petford, that book came in, I was already thinking about things. And finally, The third person the same week, and this is almost nine months ago that Melanie has been as a role in the executive associate role, asked me, oh, you know, when's Melanie coming back? And it was like the third person the same week. And I thought to myself, wait a minute, boom, it's like a light bulb went off. I know it.
I'm going to offer her this executive associate position because I've been thinking about different things. And this book, Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martel, talks about hiring the right people to free up your time so you can do. myself, the things that light me up. You know, being able to have Melanie and Sean allow me to have created Old School New World.
It allows me the time to record these types of episodes, episodes where I have guests, where I'm hearing their stories and I get to hear from their life story and what the challenges, successes they had. When Scott sent me that book and that book talked about it, that light bulb went off, I hired her. And again, as I say, the rest is history. Melanie looks after my calendars, sets up calls and visits with me or meetings. If you want to call, I call them visits.
She makes sure everything's running super smoothly on the backend, super seamless for DNA. But what she allows me to do is the things that light me up and Sean does as well, but she does more because my email was eating me up. And so I was being sucked into my email. It's almost like a rabbit hole. You go in, you start, you're working something. Oh, I have to do this one, this one, or this one.
Before you know it, you know, an hour and a half has passed and you still haven't finished the stuff that yet started. So the idea of, I was saying before about, you know, for men in particular, and I had to, is park the ego. I had to say, hey, Mr. Eagle, good to see you again. You know, I need to park you in my back pocket because I need to let go of control. I was lucky enough to find Melanie and it was easier for me to do that, much easier. It wasn't hard at all, to be honest.
But hopefully you can find someone like that and they might need to work on it. But as entrepreneurs, in order to have better time management, you can't allow your energy to be sucked out of you doing things that is better handled by someone else. So you can spend the time doing the things that are going to grow your business. So there's a saying, are you working in your business? Are you working? on your business.
And when you're working in your business, you're doing all the things, you know, the emails, the calendar, setting of calls, taking calls, you know, having discovery calls, all kinds of different things. You're not working on your business. So how do you do that? Find and surround yourself by individuals. And then you don't have to have a business to hire. You can be a mortgage agent. two, three years in the business, you're starting to grow.
You can hire an associate, someone to handle some of the paperwork, the document fulfillment. If you train them well, or maybe they can bring with them some experience of underwriting, they can do the underwriting piece and the fulfillment because that will allow you then more time to do other things that are helping you to work on your business. Because remember, whether you're with DNA Lending Group, whether you're with another brokerage, whether you're with a network, you are an entrepreneur.
You are your business. Yes, you have, you know, your networks has branding and you still are your business. You know, there's very few I've found and branding does help. Don't get me wrong in terms of, oh, you know, I've heard of, you know, Mortgage Center Canada. I've heard of DLC. I've heard of, you know, Mortgage Architects and Mortgage Alliance, you know, Verical. But typically when you're being referred, they're not referring, you know, Mortgage Center, DLC.
They're referring Mike Diaz, Joe Smith, whoever it might be. They're referring the individual. So you have to work on your business and bringing in the right people. You're not hiring for your business. You're hiring to grow your business because you're going to be able to take things off your table. But again, it requires you to park the eagle because you know the eagle is going to call. It's not like the eagle is not around. It's going to go, hey, Mayor Mike, how you doing?
It's the eagle calling. Good to see you. Always pick it up if the ego calls, always. And have a conversation. Oh, nice to see you. Yeah, I've dealt with that. I'm okay. You can go back in the back pocket. And that will, again, help you manage your time. And energy will start to be in more abundance because you're not spending all of your time and energy on something that doesn't serve you. You've now brought in good people. that they can take and probably do better than you do.
You know, Melanie, I love her so much because she does really good. She's really good with managing those things. Then again, it adds to the layers of what I'm able to do and the time management piece, along with having more energy to do those things, goes a long way. I can't stress that enough. So that's our episode for today. So episode number 11, volume number three of the 30 steps of success we have covered. relationships slash networks, handwritten notes, and time management.
As I said in the beginning, please, if you haven't subscribed, please subscribe and like to follow along. Share our podcast, you know, ask folks to subscribe. It would mean a great deal. Appreciate you guys a great deal. Thank you for tuning in and listening. And we'll talk again soon.