Recession Looming? 3 Power Plays to Fill Your Pipeline Fast

Summary

Podcast Summary: Mortgage Marketing Radio – "Recession Looming? 3 Power Plays to Fill Your Pipeline Fast"

Episode Information:

• Title: Recession Looming? 3 Power Plays to Fill Your Pipeline Fast
• Release Date: April 9, 2025
• Host: Jeff Zimfer, Mortgage Marketing Radio
• Guest: John Donnelly, Strategic Sales Leader at Service First Mortgage

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio, host Jeff Zimfer tackles a pressing concern for mortgage loan originators: "What does it take to build a sustainable mortgage business in 2025, one that thrives no matter what the market throws at you?" To delve into this, Jeff interviews John Donnelly, a strategic sales leader managing a team of 75 loan officers at Service First Mortgage. John brings a wealth of experience in building a culture of execution and offers actionable strategies to help mortgage professionals fill their pipelines effectively, even amidst economic uncertainty.

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1. Converting Real Estate Classes into Referral Partnerships

John Donnelly emphasizes the enduring value of real estate referral partnerships, despite industry noise about declining realtor loyalty. He challenges loan officers to continue nurturing these relationships as they remain a substantial source of business.

• Key Insights:

  • Referral Partnerships Are Vital: Even amid market uncertainties, realtors remain a reliable source of referrals.
  • Teaching Classes Builds Trust: By offering educational classes, loan officers can position themselves as knowledgeable and trustworthy partners.

• Notable Quote:

  • "Referral partners are still a great source of business. There's some of them that are really out hustling and they actually will give you referrals. You got to win them." ([05:09])

• Case Study:

  • John's approach involved teaching various classes, including LinkedIn optimization and mortgage-based topics, to engage realtors effectively. This strategy not only built his team's reputation but also significantly increased their referral rates.

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2. Leveraging Social Media: Commenting Over Posting

John advocates for a strategic approach to social media, focusing more on commenting and engaging with others' posts rather than solely creating original content. This method enhances visibility and fosters meaningful connections that can translate into business opportunities.

• Key Insights:

  • Engagement Trumps Content Creation: Actively engaging with others' content can drive more leads than extensively focusing on one's own posts.
  • Consistency is Crucial: Posting regularly (at least a couple of times a week) and maintaining an active presence on the chosen platform is essential.

• Notable Quotes:

  • "The money is in the commenting and the messaging." ([14:00])
  • "If you don't have that conversation, you're not going to get any anyway." ([08:19])

• Social Media Strategy:

  • Selective Platform Focus: Choose a primary social media platform (e.g., LinkedIn) and invest in building a strong presence there.
  • Content Variety: Mix video, text posts, and personal stories to keep the audience engaged and showcase different facets of your professional persona.

• Notable Quote:

  • "Is a direct message as good as a phone call nowadays in my opinion." ([14:00])

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3. Implementing the Monday Morning Test to Enhance Online Branding

John introduces the Monday Morning Test, a simple yet effective method to evaluate and improve one’s online presence. This test ensures that your digital profiles are optimized to attract and engage your target audience effectively.

• Key Insights:

  • Profile Optimization: Ensure that your social media profiles are professionally presented and clearly communicate your value proposition.
  • Value-Driven Content: Tailor your headlines and content to address the specific problems and needs of your target audience.

• Notable Quote:

  • "Whoever your target is that you're going after on your LinkedIn, they have a problem on Monday morning. What are you trying to solve?" ([18:15])

• Action Steps:

  • Digital Audit: Regularly review and update your social media profiles to ensure they reflect your professional brand and offerings.
  • Targeted Messaging: Customize your content to speak directly to your ideal clients, addressing their pain points and demonstrating how you can provide solutions.

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4. Enhancing Efficiency with Voice-to-AI Workflows

John shares his innovative use of voice-to-AI technology to streamline content creation, allowing him to generate high-quality posts while maximizing time efficiency.

• Key Insights:

  • Voice Integration: Utilize AI tools that can transcribe and format spoken ideas into written content, saving time and maintaining authenticity.
  • Continuous Learning: Adapt and refine AI-generated content to align with your personal voice and professional standards.

• Notable Quote:

  • "I’m a big, I go and walk all the time. It’s kind of my thing. And so I'll sit there and I'll have some ideas and I'll just talk into it and say, here's what I'm thinking and I'll turn that into a post." ([25:14])

• Practical Application:

  • Holiday HR Reviews: John demonstrated how he used a two-hour walk to verbally outline employee reviews, which the AI then transcribed into a structured format, significantly reducing administrative time.

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Additional Insights: Building a Structured Approach

Throughout the conversation, both Jeff and John highlight the importance of having a consistent and repeatable system to attract and convert leads. Drawing inspiration from books like The E-Myth by Michael Gerber and Atomic Habits by James Clear, they stress that:

• System Over Hustle: Success stems from well-designed systems rather than sheer effort.

• Discipline in Execution: Regularly executing these systems ensures sustainable growth and resilience against market fluctuations.

• Notable Quotes:

  • "Every successful business has a process for lead attraction, lead engagement, and lead conversion." ([11:18])
  • "If you don't have a system, you're never going to get there." ([11:57])

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Practical Steps for Building Q2 Pipeline

In the closing segment, John offers actionable advice for loan officers looking to build their Q2 pipeline:

1. Identify Target Partners:

   • Qualify Realtors and Builders: Focus on those actively engaged in the market to ensure fruitful collaborations.

2. Strategic Outreach:

   • Make Intentional Calls: The follow-up calls and conversations post-events are where leads are truly generated.

3. Leverage Existing Relationships:

   • Nurture Current Referral Partnerships: Strengthen existing ties to maximize referral potential.

• Notable Quote:
  • "What is the plan to make the calls and then follow up with the people. Because the money's made in those calls and that follow up not even in the event itself." ([29:54])

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Conclusion and Final Takeaways

The episode underscores the significance of structured systems, active engagement, and strategic use of technology in building a resilient mortgage business. John Donnelly’s experiences and strategies provide a roadmap for loan officers to navigate potential economic downturns by focusing on what they can control, leveraging existing relationships, and embracing innovative tools to enhance efficiency.

• Final Quote:
  • "You just have to engage with people. You can't sit around and wait and hope." ([13:33])

Connect with John Donnelly:

• LinkedIn: John Donnelly (Insert actual link)

Additional Resources:

• Mortgage Marketing Pro: MortgageMarketingPro.com (Insert actual link)
• Agent Classes: Proven systems to double agent referrals in 90 days.

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Listener Action Steps:

1. Attend Agent Classes: Utilize done-for-you presentations and marketing strategies to double your referrals.
2. Engage on Social Media: Focus on commenting and building relationships rather than only posting content.
3. Optimize Your Online Presence: Conduct a Monday Morning Test to ensure your profiles are effectively attracting your target audience.
4. Implement Voice-to-AI Tools: Streamline content creation and administrative tasks to free up more time for lead generation and relationship building.

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End of Summary

This detailed summary captures the essence of the podcast episode, highlighting the key strategies and insights shared by John Donnelly. By following these structured approaches, mortgage professionals can enhance their business growth and navigate challenging market conditions effectively.

Transcript

[Jeff Zimfer]

Hey, you ever feel like you're working hard, doing all the right things? You know, posting on social, showing up to events, calling agents, but your business still isn't where you want it to be? Well, you're not alone. The problem may not be your hustle. It might be your system. Imagine if instead of chasing leads, you built a business where opportunity came to you consistently and predictably. You're listening to the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast where we help mortgage professionals get more leads, close more loans, and make more money. My name is Jeff Zimfer, and I'm your host and mortgage marketing coach. Today on the show, we're asking the question, what does it really take to build a sustainable mortgage business in 2025, one that thrives no matter what the market throws at you? And to help us dig into that, we're joined today by John Donnelly, strategic sales leader with Service First Mortgage. He manages the team of 75 loan officers, and John is someone who's built a culture of execution, not excuses. So in this episode, you're going to learn three specific things. Number one, the overlooked way to convert real estate classes into referral partners, and why the follow is where the real money is. Number two, we're going to unpack John's strategy for how commenting on other people's social posts can drive more business than creating your own posts. And number three, the simple Monday morning test you can use to instantly improve your online brand and attract better relationships. Plus, we'll explore how John uses voice to AI workflows while walking. Yes, literally walking his dog. To build better content and save hours every single week. So if you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and start building a pipeline that sticks, stay tuned for this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. John Donnelly, welcome to the show.

[John Donnelly]

Happy to be here. It's awesome. Thank you.

[Jeff Zimfer]

So if we're recording this Monday, March 31, there is another noteworthy news happening in our industry. That is the acquisition of Rocket, acquiring Mr. Cooper and their entire servicing portfolio. For a few bucks.

[John Donnelly]

That's right. A few bucks is right. They're going all in. It looks like all kinds of stuff happening there.

[Jeff Zimfer]

So I'm curious, somebody in your chair, strategic sales leader, Right. How many sales individuals do you oversee?

[John Donnelly]

My team is about 75 los.

[Jeff Zimfer]

About 75 los. So when this happens, and then previously there was a few weeks back, Rockets acquisition of Redfin, do you get a lot of noise from the streets? Does. Does stuff bubble up? And I'm curious. That's what I was thinking about is like, do people then look to you to give them context or meaning around this?

[John Donnelly]

I think yes, in a sense. I mean I'm a leader at the company so they're going to kind of key off of my energy. Is it good, is it bad? What should I think about it? Because people are trying to form their opinion. I don't think we know exactly what to think of it a little bit yet. It's pretty interesting, you know. So how do you position yourself to win if you're going to go up against this behemoth? Is what I immediately think about.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Yeah. So what I wonder is because I put myself in those shoes as a loan officer and I think about, you know, it's all about what do you pay attention to and what you can control.

[John Donnelly]

Yeah.

[Jeff Zimfer]

And it makes me really empathetic and then sometimes curious how much time, how much time lost loan officers might spend mentally, cognitively, like spinning through these cycles.

[John Donnelly]

My go to and I believe this is 90% of the things that you worry about don't come to pass. And so you can spend time and energy on it and let it grow, but it's a waste of time. What can you control? You can control, you talk to you control the number of calls you make. You got to focus on the things you can control. If they come out and have the greatest product and the lowest rates and they're smoking everybody, I mean, you got to pay attention. But we're going to see, we're going to see what happens here. I think you, I think that if you do your business right, you're, there's plenty of business for all of us, even those big guys, to succeed.

[Jeff Zimfer]

I want to, I want to shout ou through an average day or week. We're entering into a new quarter of this year. What is the strategy, game plan, roadmap you're laying out for your salespeople?

[John Donnelly]

Yeah, I think that's great. The one thing that I'm talking to, we're a referral based, you know, mortgage company. And so our business is coming from, you know, realtor partners, builder partners, past customers, very traditional. It. There was a feeling in the last year that those relationships with realtors, they're not very meaningful anymore. If you look at numbers, they're not controlling transactions. They're not very loyal to any particular lender maybe because they don't have enough business and they, they don't want to try to steer and not really steer, I guess, but try to direct to their partners. I don't know all the reasons, but what I'm finding I've Been out teaching a lot of classes. I've been boots on the ground with a lot of realtor groups there. It's a viable source of business. Referral partners are still a great source of business. There's some of them that are really out hustling and they actually will give you referrals. You got to win them. Oh, it's up to you to win those deals.

[Jeff Zimfer]

So business is still being done by realtors, even when you know the news headlines would lead you to believe that it's not.

[John Donnelly]

Yeah, I know you look up and you think that buyer's agents are struggling and there's not business to be had. But I'm telling you, a lot of our business has come from our referral partners. And so don't lose sight of that. Don't go out and chase other lines of business, especially if that's what you know and you're good at. So that's one thing I've noticed, you know, is people are having success.

[Jeff Zimfer]

What are some of the things you guys do to build a fence? Well, I guess there's multiple things, right? A build a fence around the existing referral partners you have, but then there's also reach new potential referral partners. What are the. Okay, we're going into battle, man. I got my frigging my sidearm, my gun, I got my boots. John's at the front, he's leading us. What are we tactically doing?

[John Donnelly]

Yeah, tactically. I mean we're having one on one conversations on how to refer each other and how our teams work so that when I get a referral as a loan officer, I know how to sell you back so that customer stays sticky between the two of us because we both have potential to lose. The agent can still lose the deal as much as we can nowadays. So we really have to work as a team. You know, if you look at it that way, we're going out trying to expand our network by teaching classes. We've built lead gen classes, mortgage based classes. I personally do LinkedIn classes because that's my little lane I live in a lot and trying to show them how we can give them benefit and grow their business, their business grows ours. Growth. Real obvious.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Okay, so that makes me curious for anybody who's listened to me for some time, they may know that a very huge advocate of doing agent classes. We have a whole platform that helps people do that. Can you give me any use cases, examples, case studies of leading with classes? Apologize if this sounds self serving, but look, if it works, let's share It. So any specifics you want to share around how that's helped people in the field?

[John Donnelly]

Oh yeah, for sure. How does having a class, I mean, for me, I go out and offer classes to my loan officers. So I'll say let's, let's go out and put together class. My class particularly I've been teaching here lately is LinkedIn. So for sales basic, one on one, you have to make a lot of calls to get these agents into the class. You get those opportunities and then, you know, obviously if you can teach, like I would encourage all my team to be the instructor. When I teach the class, everybody comes to me. I'm the one that gets the messages. I'm the one that, you know, builds the rapport. But if I can get them to teach the class, they're the expert. And then the money's in the follow up right after that, then that's where you really get the leads.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Well, take me deeper. What does follow up look like for you? Let's say you had a magic wand and you could get this, you could get any loan officer to do the John Donnelly approved version of follow up. What is, what does that look like?

[John Donnelly]

Yeah, so what it looks like for me is, you know, at the end of my class, I've got a landing page with a QR code. You've got the presentation, you've got your takeaway and you know, you've got a chance for people, they enjoy the class to register and then when they do that, you know, they're getting emails, text messages as part of a drip and then it's on you as the loan officer to call and you know, go deeper in that connection.

[Jeff Zimfer]

So are you making a phone call as a minimum, best practice, follow up?

[John Donnelly]

Yeah, minimum. I mean, you gotta have a conversation.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Come on, John, you'd be surprised. I don't know, maybe you wouldn't be because you've dealt with sales people your whole life.

[John Donnelly]

Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. People maybe try once and they don't ever try again. For sure. Know the numbers. But yeah, if you, if you don't have that conversation, you're not going to get any anyway.

[Jeff Zimfer]

How many? Okay, so if you don't mind, I'm going to go down this, I'm going to continue on the spread for a moment. Is that okay?

[John Donnelly]

Let's go.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Because I think it's really instructional for listeners because there's a lot of loan officers who've heard look at classes isn't new per se. People have hit or miss. Tried it half assed whatnot. But I really want to illustrate. You'd be surprised how many conversations I've been having about this fundamental activity. So that's why I'm talking about it right now. For anybody who's listening and wondering, what were the initial hurdles? Were there any that you had to personally overcome? You know, how long you been teaching classes? Let me ask that.

[John Donnelly]

I don't know, maybe five, six years.

[Jeff Zimfer]

When you first thought of that, was that daunting or were you like, yeah, no problem, man. Let's go.

[John Donnelly]

Actually, is. One of my loan officers brought to me this kind of a real quick story. We had an office back when we went in office. We were in Arlington, Texas. She goes, hey, come here. And I was like, what? She brought me next door in an office we didn't have. She goes, if we blow through this wall, then our office will connect to this training room. And we're trying to figure out how to grow our business here. She goes, I could have a class in that training room, you know, three weeks out of the month and grow our business. So we said, okay, let's put a plan around that. And that began teaching, instructing for me, for her. And the idea was for her, this was the vision we casted. She wants every realtor in Arlington and Mansfield to know her name. So by having an invite to all these classes that is going on, you know, she's going to brand herself, so when a contract comes in, she can call the listing agent and say who she is and what she's doing, and they'll know her name and it'll help her soften the beaches. That was kind of the idea. The classes she taught as many as she could. We got title companies teaching classes, you know, all the things that you do. Different types of classes. We had underwriters teach classes. We had hobby lobby teach a class on how to make closing gifts. We got pretty creative on. On the different types of classes. I believe classes work when you teach. Especially like, if you're the instructor. That's where. That's where it's at.

[Jeff Zimfer]

And is she still with you?

[John Donnelly]

She's still with me. She's. She's kind of semi retired, just taking what's coming after coming at her.

[Jeff Zimfer]

So. Yeah, but that built her book of business and helped you guys collectively.

[John Donnelly]

She made president's club the next couple of years and was the affiliate member for the Arlington board of Realtors the following year because of how much it worked. So it definitely can work.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Yeah, it works if you work it like anything, right?

[John Donnelly]

Yeah. For sure, for sure. We had somebody behind her calling and doing the invites, calling and following and setting appointments, working a CRM, sending messages, you know, sharing that information with her partner. So we took it to the right level that it needed to, to really be successful.

[Jeff Zimfer]

You mean you used it as a system?

[John Donnelly]

Yeah. How about that? How about that? Wow.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Unbelievable, right? It's amazing. You know, I always go back to one of my favorite books is the E Myth by Michael Gerber. That series, you probably know of it. You're a book guy. Yep. And one of the. One of my takeaways from that book is every successful business has a process for lead attraction, lead engagement, and lead conversion. A process. Not a wing it. Not a once in a while, not a shoot. I gotta make those calls and I blow it off because something else came up. No. A repeatable duplical system that will scale. Sounds like that's what you guys applied.

[John Donnelly]

Exactly. I think of the Atomic habit books too. You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Absolutely.

[John Donnelly]

So same idea, right? If you don't have a system, you're never going to get there.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Okay, so by. By the way, everybody listening right now, huge, huge takeaway. Okay? You just heard the system, so stop procrastinating, get after it. I often ask, John, I ask these questions of loan officers. Do you need more agents or better quality agents? The answer is both. Right? And so therefore, how do you get them? And you just laid out a very duplicable system for people to do that. Okay, I want to transition now into. I'm thinking about loan officers listening always. Okay, they're like, jeff, thanks. Got it. Agent classes. What else? What else, John? You got this audience, you know, people, let's just face it, kind of overall volume is down, right? Affordable. Like all the stuff, all the noise we know, and yet people are still out there doing deals. What do you see asides from getting in front of realtors at scale? What other activities, you know, would you be coaching people on right now?

[John Donnelly]

Showing up to any event you can get in front of, I believe, whether it's an open house, a realtor event, whether it's a chamber, I don't really care what event it is. But when you show up, you got to dress up, you got to be professional, you got to do your sales pitch, you got to practice. And that momentum, it gives you energy, and you just get better. The people that are having success right now, I feel like, are out doing things. Their calendars full, they're driving around and they're busy. But they're not all doing the same things. You know, they're doing different things. I. I got a lead today for my fantasy football league. So, you know, you just don't know where things are going to come from. But you have to engage with people. You can't sit around and wait and hope.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Yes, you have to be active. Hey, are you tired of cold calling realtors and feeling like you're getting nowhere? With my agent classes, you don't have to chase agents anymore. We hand you a done for you system of ready to teach presentations, plug and play marketing, and even 200 producing agents to invite. So you can double your agent referrals in 90 days or less. Plus you'll get weekly coaching and a community of loan officers sharing exactly what's working right now. Here's a quick win from one of our members.

[C]

Been part of my agent classes for a little over a year and totally changed my business. I grew at least 25% and that was during a pretty down market and have only grown every single month that I've kept doing it. Community is great job to the Friday calls. It's awesome. Have fun with it. Teach as many classes as you can. Just do more. Do better.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Are you ready to stop chasing and start attracting agent referrals on demand? Book a call at MortgageMarketing Pro or hit the link in the show notes. Now back to our show. Where do you rank then? You know, social media engagement video. Like you're obviously pretty strong on LinkedIn, but what coaching do you have around that?

[John Donnelly]

I think that you got to post at least a couple times a week around what you're doing. But the money is in the commenting and the messaging. I think that's, I think that's the key to the whole thing. And it feels good to make a post and have people like it. But if you don't get any leads, what's the point of it all? I mean that's kind of where I'm going at with my team is like is a direct message is as good as a phone call nowadays in my opinion. Comments build are on other people's platforms bring awareness to you just like your own posts do. And so engaging on the platforms is more important for most of my lows than it is posting and putting out amazing content.

[Jeff Zimfer]

So you're on LinkedIn I want to talk a little bit about when I say you're on LinkedIn, that's where a lot of your focus is and I think that perhaps could be because of who you are, your position as in, you know, executive, sales, leadership, things like that. I'm wondering though, if you, you know, as loan officers evaluate their time and presence on social. Let's just it, it takes time. You need to get good at certain skills. Right. In terms of, as you said, commenting, being present, let alone content producing and things like that. Do you see loan officers getting diluted, trying to be too many places at once, or what advice do you have around choosing a social platform?

[John Donnelly]

I think, I think you should. Yeah, I think you can get deluded. I think also if there's one that you love, lean in hard to that. And so I mean I've had some, I had one lo build his business off LinkedIn targeting realtors and you're like, how's that happen? Well, you got to have a strategy around it. Personally, I can reach out to most Realtors, I can google their name and see that their LinkedIn profiles and their top five search results. And so I can call them up and say, okay, you know, Microsoft owns LinkedIn, it's always up there in those top few. I can call that Realtor and say, you don't have a banner. Your Last referral was 2011. If I'm a person who got a couple realtors names and I'm thinking about calling you to be my Realtor and I use LinkedIn, I'm not sure you're in the business today. Let me show you how I can, in 30 minutes update your profile to attract somebody to you instead of defer them away. I'm not saying you have to be a LinkedIn guru, that, that you got to post all the time and have all these connections, but at least put your best foot forward, you know, and so that one conversation can really take a relationship to the next level just by giving a little bit of value, you know, just that one thing.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Yeah, I like that. So I call that doing a digital audit. That's, that's an easy win and it works on other places besides LinkedIn. So I love the fact that you said, John, like wherever you're hanging out the most, wherever you're all in on social, like make that the one. Just because you heard John talk about this one LinkedIn idea and you're like, you got a strong presence on Instagram, doesn't mean you should all automatically pivot. Let me go do. No, you can use that exact same principle. Identify agents in your market who are under optimized with their profiles, Instagram, Google business, whatever, and offer tips, suggestions, etc. But John, how Do they know how do they get educated on what to recommend?

[John Donnelly]

How do they. On what to recommend?

[Jeff Zimfer]

Yeah, the loan officer. How do I know if your LinkedIn banner is weak or your Instagram profile's missing things?

[John Donnelly]

Yeah, they have to do it themselves. Right.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Are you saying they have to learn the modern.

[John Donnelly]

Learn it. That's right. Come to me, I'll show you. I'll teach you the class, at least on that. I'm not a guru in all the platforms because I do what, what I'm telling you, I lean into the ones that are the best for me. But, yeah, self leadership precedes team leadership, always. And if you have to always be learning, you have to be reading, you have to develop your skills. And if you fill your cup up, it'll pour over to other people. I mean, that's just how it is.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Well, and we're gonna put. We're gonna link up your LinkedIn profile in the show, notes for people who can go follow you. But if you look at your headline like, here's an obvious place to start I this Helping Mortgage Professionals break Through Ceilings and Build Thriving careers. Well, it's pretty obvious what your call to action is, what your offer is, Right. To capture somebody's attention.

[John Donnelly]

Yeah. The point of that is, I call it the Monday morning question. Whoever your target is that you're going after on your LinkedIn, they have a problem on Monday morning. Well, what. What are you trying to solve? What, what is it? How can you solve that problem? Because then you're connecting with the people that you're targeting. Right. So if you wanted to, you know, attract realtors, you know, to call you, how can you, how can you change your headline up to speak to realtors to help, you know, help them know that you can be their coach and guru and partner. Obviously, mine's targeted to other people in my industry. Loan officers, branch managers. You know, it's pretty clear there's, hopefully they, you know, I'm answering the Monday morning question. If they're up there on a Monday morning, they don't know where to take their business and they run across me. Maybe that's the, the sign they needed.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Absolutely, yeah. Whatever platform. That is true, by the way, in terms of headlines and examples of your bio, now you've got 20,000 followers on LinkedIn, man. Congratulations.

[John Donnelly]

Thank you.

[Jeff Zimfer]

I know that just magically showed up overnight. You didn't have to do much to get that right.

[John Donnelly]

Oh, yeah. I've been working at it since 2018. So on purpose, how.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Now, this is again, I'm just going to focus on LinkedIn because this is John's profile. So if you're listening again, put this in the context of your social platform profile of choice. How has building a presence and a brand awareness on LinkedIn specifically for you? How has that you think, impacted your business and your goals?

[John Donnelly]

Man, it's interesting because for a long time I didn't know that people were seeing me the way they were. And then I'll go to an event like tmba, Texas Mortgage Bankers and five people will tell me about posts that I've made in stories about things I've talked about, but nobody commented. Nobody liked that. Really early on, that gave me a lot of energy. I was like, okay, something's happening here, but I don't know how to gauge the success of it. Exactly. And then I'll interview people, especially in operations, and they'll pull up my LinkedIn profile and tell me about it. So it's a tool that, you know, it softens the beaches for me. Doesn't necessarily bring a whole lot of leads in and make your phone ring off the hook or anything like that, but. But it softens the beaches for me when I reach out to people and they look at my profile and they feel like, okay, you know, I see who this guy is and I can tell what he's about. So that's what, that's what it is for me.

[Jeff Zimfer]

I like that term. You've used it three times now. Soften the beaches.

[John Donnelly]

Yeah, I think we're all trying to, you know, in sales, trying to make it a little bit easier on ourself, try to get some influence where people recognize us. So it just makes it easier.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Well, I mean, a warm call is better than a cold call, right?

[John Donnelly]

That's right. All day long.

[Jeff Zimfer]

All right, so where are you ranking the different types of content you post? I'm looking at your feed here. You've got a fair amount of mix of video and text. Tell us how you decide what your content strategy is.

[John Donnelly]

Yeah, I look at my, my best days for content and the Most interaction on LinkedIn is probably Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays. So I really gear my, my best stuff that's really industry related, you know, tips for other people in the industry. I'll put them into those days most the time. Mondays not as strong, Friday's not as strong. And so my goal is to post Monday through Friday, sometimes on the weekends. And you know, Fridays are dead to me. They're not a lot happening. I do personal posts on Fridays. You know, all that stuff just hangs out there in social. So if I throw up a picture of me and my family doing something or at the, at a game or whatever that's out there, people can connect with it. But it's not my best stuff. So I like mixing in a video a week. Sometimes I'll do a video every day. It just depends on how I feel. I also like to. Sometimes I'll just, just do text only. You know, you get a selfie picture in there. If you don't know what to post, just document something that's going on your day. It's not that hard to come up with some things to talk about on your LinkedIn. But I'm in the. I'm just about to launch a newsletter. Just a long form content that I'm working on. I don't know, I just like mixing it up. It's about. I post around a couple of things. My core values, who I am as a leader, what it's like to look at my work in my company. Because that's the target audience that I'm aiming at. So that's what someone's gonna learn about me.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Which by the way, that right there is a key point we could spend 15 minutes talking about is your target audience. You've gotta be specific in your head of like who your, your icp, your ideal client profile, whatever. Right. On who your content is for. Because if I to your point and I go to look at your LinkedIn content, it's clearly for that person you're trying to reach versus a loan officer listening perhaps. Who is their content for? Well, maybe it's for a buyer, maybe it's for a financial advisor, maybe it's for a realtor, I don't know. And you can kind of cross all three of those, right. With your kind of content. How do you.

[John Donnelly]

Yeah, I think on that, I mean in your content, in your post or ever call out that audience first too. I mean I try to do that specifically. If I'm posting the realtors because I'm teaching a class, I'm gonna say hey, real filters, you know, I'm going to call you out because I want your attention. Or hey, loan officers, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna call that out first to try to narrow the focus of who's gonna read that post. So I think that matters.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Yeah, 100%. Do you actually have a content like schedule or calendar or how do you actually, you know, get yourself to. You do.

[John Donnelly]

Yeah. So I started, I started using a tool called Airtable. It's just like A Google Docs, you know, real simple. And I started putting together a history of all of my posts that I was making and I didn't know where I was going with it. I just started making posts. This was a few years ago. And then over time I had this huge database that I could search around different topics, realizing that, you know, you talk about a lot of the same stuff over time and you decide to rework it and make it sound fresh and new. And so I just, every time I make a post, I put it in, I put the date and the image and a link to it and I have that history. It was pretty cool because it's like you're writing a book, you know, if you want to look back on it. But also, anytime I have an idea, I've probably already posted about it or written something so I can search it and see what I've done before and then use that going forward and then back to my same ideas. You know, I'm generally posting, you know, some kind of a tip during the week. I'm part my personal stuff on Friday, you know, just kind of have my themes that I'm working off of depending on what's going on. I share some people's content, you know. Also, it's still real critical that you got to comment and post on other people's stuff. I just think that's been one of the things that's really helped me elevate how I get a lot of connections is because I engage with other people, especially people with a big platform, and then they see me and then next thing you know, I'm getting more connections because they see me engaging with those other people.

[Jeff Zimfer]

It's such a great idea to jump on there for a second is, you know, it's like the largest networking party on the planet and it never closes. Are you using GPT or any other AI in helping you with content?

[John Donnelly]

Yeah, I am. I think it's. I love it. I think it's great. It's 90% good a lot of times, but you better pay attention to what it's producing, you know. And so I've kind of taught mine to write a format like my A post the way I like it, with a hook and bullet points, you know, talking seventh grade level because it's got to be quick and easy, you know, all that type of stuff. So it kind of knows me and then I'll. I'm. I'm a big. I go and walk all the time. It's kind of my thing. And so I'll Sit there and I'll have some ideas and I'll just talk into it and say, here's what I'm thinking and I'll turn that into a post. Sometimes it's pretty good, sometimes not so good. But you don't just blindly trust that stuff. I mean, look at it and see. But it definitely. What I like is that it learns me and it kind of knows my voice and it can tie. It can pull other aspects of other posts into it. And so I'm leaning into it and learning.

[Jeff Zimfer]

When you say you walk and talk, are you. Tell me more about that. Are you actually using the GPT phone app and speaking or what are you doing?

[John Donnelly]

Exactly, Exactly. I taught it. I know this is like kind of funny, like I'm telling myself, but. But I taught it our entire HR review system and we wrote, we had to do reviews recently for our managers and so I literally went on about a two hour walk and I just told it based on the format I put in. Here's all the things I think about this person. For me, that's way easier because I'm a verb I can verbalize a lot better than I can write. And then I said, just professionally put it into the format I need. Bam. It was just done. Saved me so much time.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I was watching a video of somebody who runs a social media marketing agency and she was talking about how she uses GPT on behalf of her customers and she said that she gets better results by actually talking to ChatGPT because it is easier for it to understand context because it can hear how you talk and the different nuances and then, you know, how you talk is different than you write. And so writing is kind of a little bit more finite and tighter versus the audio is actually you've got that kind of wider lane to go down.

[John Donnelly]

Yeah, it. So last night I went on a walk and I just mentioned I'm working on a newsletter. I've never done a newsletter in LinkedIn. I feel like I talk about it, but I should do it myself. You know, I'm going to teach classes and so I had a plan of what I kind of wanted it to be like. So I told it. Act as my social media coach. Here's what I'm thinking. I want to write a newsletter, but I want you to ask me a minimum of 10 questions, as in an interview, and help me develop my name, how it's going to look, the format. I want to write on one sheet for my assistant to help me understand how to do this. And it kept. I had a conversation for 45 minutes with ChatGPT and it kept asking me questions and helped me come up with a name and to help me build what I think was better than I would have come up with in a 45 minute window. Like, it's really fast. So I know.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Do you, do you use in the audio where it talks back?

[John Donnelly]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Because that's like you can turn that on or off. Some people just like it reads your voice and types it out. But I'm talking about the actual dialogue. Like it's your version of her.

[John Donnelly]

Exactly. I haven't named it. I know some people have, but I haven't named her or him, but. Well, it's like a friend, you know, it is coming that way. And I think people are going to find that they actually enjoy the conversations at some point more than they think about.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Side note, I named mine Carmen.

[John Donnelly]

Okay.

[Jeff Zimfer]

And my wife is not a fan of the female voice Carmen that I have conversations with.

[John Donnelly]

I don't have a name, but it's coming. I know it's not far. I know in Google, Google Maps there, there's a voice that I have and I call him Homie because he's. I was like, hey, homie, thanks. You know, I always joke about that, but you know, I'm sure it's coming.

[Jeff Zimfer]

That's awesome. Yeah. By the way, guys, again, listeners, that's another takeaway. If you haven't used the audio version, download Chat GPT to your mobile phone. The actual Real Chat GPT app, not some of those third party look alikes that are out there. Because you can use the free version and, and it'll change. It'll take it to the next level. Your usage and output on what chat GPT it'll be, it'll be easier. Okay, we got like two minutes left. We're in a sales meeting, John. We just wrapped up Q1. You got some people who you know are on track, you got some people who aren't. Let's just say people are wondering, how do I build Q2 pipeline? Let's just, just, let's take that. I don't want to get too far ahead of our skis here. Q2 pipeline, not to be redundant, but it's okay if you can go back. You want to go back to the fundamentals of what we said. Doesn't matter. But what are you coaching our table right here, sitting around the round table. Okay, guys, go hit the streets. This is what you do.

[John Donnelly]

Yeah. This is what you Do. First thing is you got to know who you're targeting. I mean, sounds really basic, but for us, if we're going to target realtor partners, I want to qualify a list and make sure they're actually doing business before I go. Put a lot of effort into them because there's a lot of them that aren't, you know, we, we hear all those stats. If you're going to lean into builders, we do a lot of builder business too. We have a lot of relationships that you can kind of work and, and utilize. Get strategic on which ones you're going to go after and why you're going to. Why you're going to go after the certain builders you're targeting. But then go back to what we just said. What is the plan to make the calls and then follow up with the people. Because the money's made in those calls and that follow up not even in the event itself. I don't know that many people. You know, it's just a place for you to showcase yourself and attract people to you. But until you call somebody afterwards, you're not going to get a lead. You're not going to grow your business. So that's the basics.

[Jeff Zimfer]

There you go, man. Reconnaissance. Get in the field, right. Make stuff, turn rocks over. Make contact. Let people know you exist. That's awesome. Okay, so for people who want to connect with John, I'm going to assume linking you up on the LinkedIn is.

[John Donnelly]

The place to go, now's the place to be. Yes, sir.

[Jeff Zimfer]

So you just got to go to LinkedIn and search the John Donnelly is your actual profile handle, I guess. Is that what you call it? Profile, yeah. John, this has been a wonderful education on how to get back to the basics, you know, and execute on what's actually working.

[John Donnelly]

Yes, sir. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Love your show.

[Jeff Zimfer]

Yeah. And by the way, if anybody is interested in learning more about your organization. Right. I suggest you to check out what John's doing there as well, because you guys have quite the culture at Service first. It's all about culture and leadership. So if you are considering a change, I would encourage you to check out John and Service first because they clearly have a culture of leadership and leading from the front. So just wanted to say that that was unsolicited, John. You bet. Listeners, you know what to do. Follow John. Link in the show notes. Let him know you heard this podcast episode. Let him know on a comment. DM him in LinkedIn At a minimum, or comment on his. Let them know what your one big takeaway was from today. We appreciate you guys tuning in. We'll see you on the next one. Okay, that's it for today's episode. Before we wrap up, I just wanted to remind you about my agent classes. Your proven system to double your agent referrals in just 90 days. Imagine never having to cold call again. Instead building real lasting relationships with top producing agents who want to send you business with done for you presentations, marketing automation, weekly coaching. It's all designed to make growing your business easier and fun. So if you're ready to take control of your agent referrals and grow your income, visit MortgageMarketing Pro or check the link in the show notes. And while you're there, don't forget to check out the success stories from other mortgage bros who've already seen incredible results. Thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next episode.