Oliver Gwaltney Blog: September 2016

How can you become a top performer as a Loan Mortgage Officer? Surprisingly, the answer is to cultivate the right mindset to get from where you are to where you want to go.

Almost everything else has been worked out for you, from how to get leads to how to sell. The mortgage business has established many best practices on what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.

If this is the case, why aren’t more people successful in this career?

First, they have not realized that a mortgage business culture of support can provide them with all the practical know-how they need to take their career to new heights. Consequently, they are preoccupied with trying to reinvent the wheel.

Second, even when people find out what to do, they may not do it consistently enough to get results.

Here are four belief systems you need to cultivate to become a top performer:

1. You must have a burning desire for success

Napoleon Hill is famous for pointing out the obvious: if you don’t have a clear and definite purpose and if you don’t have a burning desire to succeed, you won’t get very far.

2. Be a doer, not a talker

It may be an oversimplification to divide the world of business people into two groups: talkers and doers, but that’s a good way to understand the dynamics of walking your talk.

The mind is quick to grasp theories and to sprout philosophies on what things mean and how to do things. Unfortunately, that’s where most people stop. Unless you are a relentless action taker, you will not make much progress in life.

It’s easy enough to talk a good game and you might even convince a few people to believe that you are the type of person that you say you are, but, at the end of the day, only action counts. Action, not just good intentions, creates results. Only by learning to fail quickly can you learn how to do the essential things you need to do to achieve astonishing success.

3. You must have a systematic way of doing things

A system is a clear set of actions steps to take that have been proven to work. Once the unnecessary steps have been removed and any necessary steps added in, and once you have tested out the system again and again, then you must repeat this systematic process.

While action, as mentioned earlier, is the key to success, it can’t be random action. Simply jumping up and taking any kind of action hoping for some kind of results is not a smart way to go about doing things.

Action must have a direction to be effective. It has to contribute to your productivity.

You must know what action to take and why you are taking it.

For action to be significant, it must be based on setting a clear action and thinking through the best steps to take to achieve the desired results.

In addition, once you have found the most effective course of action to take, you must be able to replicate it over and over again.

4. You must exert the discipline to get things done

Even when you have set your goals, made your plans and are consistently taking small steps day in and day out it may not be enough. You may still not succeed because of an innate desire for variety. As human beings, we may crave predictability, but once we get it, we want variety. Once you have found a pattern that works for you, stick with it. Discipline is not only about doing the right things, but it also doing the right things when the inspired mood has long since passed.

5. Stay in the eye of the storm

When unexpected things happen, they can throw you off course. You’re doing fine until you run into a personal crisis, or someone close to you has a crisis or the business you’re working in has a crisis, or the entire economy is in crisis.

Crises are like storms—they are frightening as they approach and terrifying as you go through them, but then they pass and things settle down again.

Do you remember the financial crisis from 2007 to 2009? Many economists considered it to be the worst crisis on the planet since the Great Depression in the 1930s. If you listened to the news for long enough in those days, you would be convinced that the sky was falling. Today, we look back and think of it as just another footnote in history.

After a crisis, one of two things might happen. Either everything falls apart and people have to start over or there is an unexpected leap to a new type of order.

The mortgage business survived the crisis, and if you stay true to your goals and plans and continue to take action on a daily basis, you can survive any crises you face.

The best way to survive a crisis is to stay calm, to do the best you can, and to realize that everything will eventually blow over.

Remember, it takes time to be great. Success rarely happens overnight. It’s often a result of doing something that builds momentum over time. Follow these 5 guidelines to create the right mindset to be a successful producer year after year and achieve a lucrative career in the loan mortgage business.

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