Everything great starts with a great question. And this question came in 2012… Over the years I had helped bankers, brokers, CPAs, and business attorneys to price and place loans for numerous clients. All of this work had taken place outside of the traditional banking model. But despite these years of experience, I had never been pushed to break down my success into a systematic process.
This particular day I was talking with my IT specialist about how to streamline some of our processes. My colleague knew my quick and dirty elevator speech: “When cut to the chase my job is very simple. I provide capital sourcing.”
I was telling him this again when he looked me in the eye, giving me the seller’s nod – shaking his head up and down – and then asked, “Now tell me more… But this time tell me the two or three things that tie all of your successes together.”
As I began reflecting on how I got into the business and what created my successes, he threw me an out by saying, “I’ll tell you what, take a few days to think it over. Then let’s focus on how you would teach someone else your system.”
As I was jotting down different ideas in my journal over the following days, I found myself coming back again and again to one key word: PROCESS. It was clear that capturing the who, what, where, when, how & why of my process was essential. Turning my “art” into a “scientific process” would enable me to teach others.
After lots of searching, modeling, and revising, I finally condensed it down to five basic steps.
The Five Steps
1) Prospecting
2) Assessing
3) Negotiating
4) Packaging
5) Follow Up
As I shared these five key steps at our next meeting, it was the business equivalent of an epiphany. My colleague and I looked at each other and realized that we should use this model, this concept, this process – better yet, this platform – to show others a clear, proven path to success as a loan broker.
Creating a step by step training system would allow us to leverage my skills, my know how, my knowledge, my research, my network, my contacts, my resources, all of my painful trial and error, my pitfalls, my successes, and last but not least, my passion for working with our brightest commodity: people. Over the next two years I formalized the process on paper. But I still didn’t have the right team to bring it to market.
It wasn’t until 2015 that I shared the concept with my longtime friend and colleague Tom O’Rourke, former Director of Marketing for Wells Fargo Banks. At the end of our meeting I challenged Tom to do his “due diligence” in the commercial loan broker training space to see what products and services were offered throughout the country.
At our next meeting Tom expressed the same shock about what students were paying for substandard programs. We set out to design a better training that combined a real world step by step process with the most current technology, social media platforms, and business development strategies.
Right away, Tom identified the next missing link: a “take no prisoners” marketing and social media type that understands national branding and marketing for small, medium and large businesses.
He called me a few days later to let me know I was going to be introduced to a very unique type of marketing. The next week we sat down with this guy by name of Shane Walton whose energy, knowledge, and creativity was just oozing! For the first time, I knew we had just developed the “A” Team.
The key that brought us together was a shared passion to bring quality, not quantity to the marketplace. By teaching individuals to be successful and arming them with the best branding and marketing tools available, we are creating a network of loan brokers that will have no limits of success throughout the USA and Canada.
For more information on the Commercial Loan Broker Institute, visit CommercialLoanBrokerInstitute.com