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A
Let me ask you something. How many loans are you funding right now, and how confident are you that you'll finish this year strong? Because a lot of loan officers that I speak to feel stuck and are feeling the headwinds and challenges of this current market. Look, I know the market's been challenging, but opportunity hasn't disappeared. There's transactions happening in your backyard every single month. Take a look at the closed purchases in your county that happened and ask yourself, how many of those have you gotten? So it's kind of like that book, remember, from years ago, who Moved My Cheese? Who Moved My Cheese? The cheese is moving a lot more, perhaps, than it has in the past. The question is, are you moving and adjusting with it? Are you executing the right plays to get in front of the business that is happening not only in your backyard, but elsewhere and over the next few months, how do you set the tone for the rest of next year? For 2026, or at least for Q1? 2026? Look, no matter what the market does, there's only three things we can control. Our mindset, our skill set, and our actions. When's the last time you've worked on any one of those, let alone all three? If we haven't met before, my name is Jeff Zimfer, host of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast and founder of Mortgage Marketing Institute, where I help loan officers across the country create real growth using modern marketing strategies that actually work. Before we dive into this week's episode, I want to talk about a win of the week that comes from one of our members who is part of our My Agent classes community, Steve Tomaselli. Steve's been with me for a few years now, and what he does is he builds his personal brand, builds a platform that attracts real estate agents at scale without chasing cold calling or paying for leads, and helps him establish his brand recognition as the preeminent loan officer in his community. For agents to be attracted to, Steve is achieving his goals because you may have heard the saying that everything you want is just beyond the other side of your reach and your reputation. And that's what Steve is building. Steve just shared with me today as I'm recording this, he hosted one of our classes that we equip our loan officers to teach, and it was about AI. It's called the AI Unfair Advantage. Did it at a builder's model home, which is one of the unique ideas we have that we share with our members about different ways you can do classes that are unique and different. Well, what Steve shared with me is immediately afterwards, before Even doing the follow up, he got a VA purchase lead from an agent who has attended his class. She works with Keller Williams and he's not worked with her before. And that's just one small example of a win, you know. And how do you build momentum? You stack wins and you keep running the plays that move the chains Steve shout out to you. You've been running the plays you've been executing, you're getting results. And that's just one small example from Steve for his success. And we've got a whole bunch of others. And look, with AI, with tech and all that kind of stuff, there's multiple pillars in your business and if you still recognize agents as a profitable pillar of business that you want to attract high quality referrals from that have a high conversion rate, but you don't want to do it the traditional way of cold calling, chasing and all the other things and you'd rather attract agents to you. Well, then I invite you to go check out what we do at myginclasses. There's a link in the show notes or you can go to go.myasianclasses.com and go watch some of the video success stories we have from other loan officers. You'll see how they're scaling their referrals without chasing cold calling or the usual frustrations that many of you have when it comes to real estate agents. Check the link in the show notes or Simply go to go.myagentclasses.com and learn more about building your own agent referral machine. Now, today's guest is someone you should know. His name is Todd Skriema. And if you've been in this business for more than five minutes, you've likely heard his name or his company, Summit Funding. He's been in the industry for 33 years, funds summit Funding. And Summit Funding is a top 30 lender. And Todd has personally coached over 5,000 loan officers. And in this episode, what we're getting into is why most loan officers never get past four or five loans a month and what to do if that's you. The real reason call reluctance is killing your growth and how to build systems so you're not the one doing everything yourself. At some point, you've got to get out of being the operator and be able to scale. And that comes down to a few different key things that Todd's going to share in this episode. We've even got some wild stories, from vending machines to Ferraris that will change how you think about business and life. So if you want to get clear about finishing this year strong and set yourself up for a better 2026. Check out this episode. It's for you. Let's get into this week's show. Todd, welcome to the show.
B
Hey, thanks Jeff, for having me. It's just fun to do this stuff.
A
I'm surprised it's taken us this long to get here. I mean, it's not like you're not known in my world. Right. The loan officer industry.
B
I've seen your name for years as well and I'm like, I don't know why. We just never connected. Well, I'm glad this is a fun way to do it.
A
No, it certainly is and I'm glad we're finally doing it because I think it's the right time in the marketplace right now. The folks who may not be familiar with you heard who you are in the intro. You've got an incredible resume and background you in this industry with Summit funding and you know, we can get into all the accolades, volume and you know, thousands of el you've coached and stuff over the years. What I want to do is, is cut to the chase because you do have this both breadth and depth of an understanding of really what it takes to succeed across all markets, all cycles. You know, be you being in this, what, 20, 30 years now.
B
33 years.
A
33 years.
B
I know I, I know I don't look that old, Jeff, but I'm old.
A
I get, yeah, this is industry can age you. So we are coming out of about three years of winter time, right. Of some challenging markets, rates and headwinds and all the stuff. And now we're seeing some relief on the horizon regards to rates affecting affordability mindset. And so what I wanted to do was take your, your very, you know, in depth understanding of the psychology, the habits, the systems of what you've seen. Because you've coached some of the most successful originators in the entire country for years, you now have a chance to coach the listener. I don't care where they're at in the business. Let's just, let's just say that they recognize the opportunity in front of them over the next three months to six months. What are you coaching Ellis to do right now heading into the end of this year for the start of 2026?
B
Well, first of all, just some context. I agree with everything you said. So just so you can hear it from a mortgage company owner and an originator and a coach for 24 years. We haven't had this bent of a market since the 80s. And so it's important to realize that, hey, a couple things. First of all, there was 4% of loan officers according to Modex last year that did over 20 million. 4%. So if you do the math and you're like, okay, 4% of loan officers made 200 plus thousand. Yeah, like that's dismal. That's, that's not kind of bad. That's really bad. Okay, yeah, yeah. Then now there's still 250,000 home loans done a month in America, but there used to be 4 or 500,000. So. So it's been bad. And I think it's okay to say that without excuses, without. It's just there's a cycle going on. Right. So understand that cycle happened. Yes, we're hopefully we're starting to come out of that. Probably not an overnight recovery by any means, but hey, a 15% bump in the market is, is a lot more loans, especially when you have roughly half the people gone from it. So that 15% may feel like 30% to you. So there's a lot of. I prefer to look at logic and patterns rather than emotions because our emotions can lead us astray. If you're talking about a couple big things on my head, when you talk about the loan officer that, hey, this is their long term career and they've suffered through the last three, three and a half years, what's it going to take in order to get back to where they were before if they're not already? First of all, let's talk about refinances because we know that rates are coming down and you know, with a little bit of help you can get in the low sixes and a lot of people closed at seven, seven and a half and their debts have gone up. I think three or four months ago we set an all time high in consumer debt. So we have a lot of debt. And homes from 2000 to 2005 doubled the home values in America. My $200,000 house is now worth 400,000 and I've got a ton of equity, but I've also got a ton of debt. So I think there's a lot there. I was talking to a loan officer this morning. He says, I need a script to call a hundred past clients. I said, okay, well, good job on calling a hundred past clients. When you doing it? He says, Tomorrow, all day, 12 hours. I scheduled. Just call a hundred past clients. I said, good. I said, the script is this. I said, jeff, we all know that rates are coming down, but the question is how low do they go? Right now you're at seven and a quarter. I can get you to six and a quarter. It's going to save you $250 a month. But the danger is, oh my God, they could go to five and a half and I'll miss the boat. So we came up with a program called the Free Refinance. So if anytime rates drop in the next year, after I close your loan, we're going to save you 250 bucks a month. We're going to pay off these credit cards. That will free up another $300 a month. That's the right thing to do to make your 18% credit card now a 6% tax deductible. So your net interest on that's going to be 4%. So that's the smart thing to do. I'm going to give you a guarantee that if your rates go down further, I'm going to refinance you for free. How does that sound to you? It's a no risk. So. So when you talk about offers in scripting, that becomes very important. That's way different than me saying, hey, hey, Jeff, it's Todd. I see rates are six and a quarter. Do you want to refinance?
A
Yeah, yeah.
B
Average person has no context. And you didn't take away their fear and concerns. I don't. How you get that message out is important. I mean, I would scream at the top of my lungs through private, through email, through social, like, you should be doing all those things. Okay, so that's a simple way of doing it. When you talk about the purchase side, that's a whole nother thing. You and I were talking just for a second off camera, and I said, you know, Jeff, I've. I've literally coached over 5,000 loan officers. And I'll ask you this question. Of course, what I've taught for 24 years now is make at least 20 outbound calls a day. Now, Jeff, how many loan officers do you think actually do that? That I've coached?
A
Just take a guess that you've coached 10 to 20%.
B
Zero.
C
Zero.
A
Really? Okay.
B
Almost zero. I only know of one gentleman, Oleg Takach up in Seattle. And Oleg close 430 loans last year, if I remember correctly. I just talked to him a couple months ago, and he does that. And he has structure and systems, mass marketing does all that stuff. But he personally still makes a ton of outbound calls. That's the only person I know of that does it. I'm not saying people don't make any sales calls. They don't make enough sales calls. So if you think about it, I'll tell you a quick story. My dad, when I was really little, we were very fancy. We lived in a. Not a single wide, but a double wide trailer. Very fancy. My dad was a musician and he owned a bar. Well, two little kids come along and he's like, I probably got to make money. So he came over, his parents came over on the boat from Italy and they, she had, my grandparents had seven children and my dad was one of them. And they all ended up being entrepreneurs and way back in the day, my grandmother. So she was the first person to ever throw Tupperware parties. So like you teach people how to do workshops all the time. She was like one of the original workshop party people. Anyway, long story. So my dad starts, he does this weekend. He, he had his kids all weekend doing mailings and he mailed a thousand people to gas stations. The state of Oregon. We lived in Reading, California. Well, a bunch of people called him on his, on his flyer that he sent out. He's trying to sell him vending machines. Now remember, this is in the seventies, this is before AM, PMS and seven elevens at convenience stores. There, there wasn't any.
A
Right.
B
So they all had vending machines. So he went on the road and he booked 33 appointments and he got six sales in today's dollars. He came home, he had made $6,000 in a week. Nice. And he's like, home run. Long story short, he started developing that business and my whole life, from the time I was seven, every morning, banging the phones, like living for him, eight in the morning till two o' clock in the afternoon every day. That's what he did and that's what allowed him to make a lot of money. Okay, Right. So if you, then you take that to loan officers and you say to I, I made three calls last week and I got one appointment. I'm like, okay, you, that's not that sales math doesn't work. I said because for every 10 opportunities you have of meeting with a referral account like a good real estate agent or an investor or a financial Planner, for every 10 meetings, you're only going to do business with two. So you need 10 of those meetings all the time. Yeah, maybe once a week or, or five, five a week at the minimum. Now, the reason I say this is when I've watched loan officers, there's two problems. Either massive call reluctance, which is normal for everybody, or if they're doing 6, 7, 8, 10 loans a month, it's the first thing to go is the development side of the business. And so what I have taught people is to have someone make the calls for you. And this is a big subject because people always say, oh, they won't say things. Right. They won't do this. If you have a really good offer and you call a good. Let me do a role play. Jeff, you are. You're a successful realtor. You closed 20 deals last year. Okay. I'm a dialer. Right. I'm an appointment setter. And I call you and I say, hey, Jeff, it's Todd Schema over here at Summit Funding. I work with Jim Reed. Do you have just literally 60 seconds? Sure, sure.
A
Okay. What's this? You know the. What's this about? Right?
B
Yes. Jeff, I'm going to get straight to the point. Jim has a list of the top hundred investors in this area. They bought 420 homes last year. He is calling and setting up appointments with these investors, and he needs a really good realtor to go with him. If we can get two or three or four of these investors, it'll probably get you another 10 deals next year. And Jim meet with you about this strategy for 15 minutes? Yeah. Most of them say yes, right?
A
Sure. Right.
B
Now, Jim really does have the list of investors. And we've got their names, their social sites, their cell phones. We got it all. Okay. So you got to do some work in order to make an offer. But when you make that offer, it's. It's got to be something that they want, which is money, time or joy in this market. It's money. That's it. Okay. Because everyone's starving. So we just focus on money offers. Yeah. Not the. But the next problem is I don't have four hours a day to make those calls. Hire someone to do it for you. It's that simple. Yeah.
A
I mean, I think the premise is understandable. There's, you know, then there's. Then there's the excuses you hear.
B
Right.
A
You already mentioned one of them, which is they're not going to say it as good as me. I think it gets back to trust. Right. And this goes back to kind of my opening question is mindset, which is, you know, the difference between somebody who's running or building a business versus somebody who's a loan officer or a sales rep.
B
Right.
A
And there's. There's two different approaches to that. Right. System structure. And it sounds like you're talking about somebody who's approaching it from a business standpoint, because if you take your retail shop and, you know, Whatever. I don't name the retail shop, the plumber, the dry cleaner, the whatever. The boring business. Right. Usually the owner. Now maybe in the early stages, but in most cases, once the owner like, is this place where they want to grow? They're not doing the outbound stuff.
B
Yeah. So, so let, let me, let me say a couple things. First of all, there's that old saying, if someone can do it 80% as good as you have them do it. If that script that I just did, we take people, we pay them 20 bucks an hour and then bonus based on how many appointments they set. So you'd be shocked how many people want to work from home while their kids are at school and they call like crazy. Give them a simple personality test, know that they there, there are people that do not have call reluctance. So there's a test for that. So you hire those people.
A
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
I joined it because I was tired of doing business the way that regular loan officers have been doing it in my market, which is just making the core calls every Monday and Friday, checking in with real estate agents. I had done that for years and it seemed like everybody was doing that. I needed something different and I wanted to find a way that I could work with the agents that I want to work with. I wanted to find a way that I could have a captive audience every month, every couple of weeks, where I could find agents that were like minded and that wanted to work with me as well. So it's probably brought in, I'm just guessing here, but it's probably brought on in the three years I've been back with the program, it's probably brought on, I'd probably say about $40 million in volume since then.
B
Right.
C
And it's led to some massive relationships.
B
I, um.
C
And I wouldn't be able to do those things without this program. The value of these Friday calls are so incredibly valuable for all of us. I get upset if I miss it on a Friday. The cost of this program is what is worth it. Just because of these Friday calls that we're on where we help coach each other. We're just here to help each other add value to our realtor partners.
A
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.
B
Now here's. Here's the truth. Here's what people miss. Is it, Jeff, do you think it's better for my business, say I'm a retail loan officer. Is it better for my business for me to use that script that I just used and call 10 people a day? Or is it better that I hire someone and they make five hours of those calls a day? So they're making 50 to 60 or 70 calls a day, which is gonna be more effective. Even though I'm this guru, professional sales coach, they're just learning one script, maybe two. That's it. And they say it 70 times a day. It takes em about two days to sound as good as me.
A
I agree. Let me throw this. Have you ever heard this objection? You probably have, which is people are making outbound calls to realtors on behalf of the lo and then the realtors, like, know if so. And so if Todd can't call me directly, if he doesn't have the time for me, you know what I mean?
B
I've had about one out of a hundred times out of one.
A
It happens. That's just the wrong mindset. Realtor, right? Yeah.
B
It's like, so let me flip the script and say, I bought your. Your class where you teach me how to put on events. Right. Is it better that I spend five hours calling people, or is it better that someone else can call people for five hours and invite them to that enticing webinar or that meeting workshop? What people have to understand is you're not going to spend five hours doing that.
A
Yeah, exactly. You'll never get there.
B
Yeah. You'll never do it. So it's a fake analogy.
A
That's good. Fake analogy.
B
I like that.
A
It's a story you're telling yourself.
B
Yeah, it's like an analogy. I love this analogy. Jeff, let's say that your favorite car, sports car, it's a Ferrari 500. I don't know Ferrari, but it's a Ferrari. It's the best. It's a $500,000 Ferrari. I got the perfect color. I even deliver it to your gods. It's a gift I love. Thanks for having me on the podcast. Here's your Ferrari. But it comes with no gas and I have One rule just Jeff, you can never sell the car and you could never drive it because it's got no gas in it and you can never put gas in it.
A
Wow.
B
It lost its functionality. Yeah, it's pretty. In your garage.
A
It lost its real.
B
When your friends want to go for a ride, you can't go. So it, that's, that's, that's the story that loan officers tell themselves is that they're going to buy the Ferrari, drive the Ferrari, but in this case, you can't drive the Ferrari ever. So it does you no good. You telling yourself what you should do when your actions are. You never do it is dumb. It doesn't work and it never will. And that's why if you think about this, like Consumer Direct needs to meet private mortgage banking. If you don't learn to mass market, if you don't learn how to get 10 quality appointments a week, guess what? Rocket will. And they will eat your lunch.
A
Okay, I like that. 10 quality appointments a week. Yeah. Because we need to spend more time in our genius zone. Right. Which is us face to face or whatever, virtually talking to people who can send us business.
B
Well, if you think about it, Jeff, like when you're originator. My last eight years originator, I did average 140 million a year. It was a big originator. You were too. I, I never, after six months in the business, I had two full time appointment setters. That was the whole key for my growth. By my third year, I was number two in my company. So I'm not saying that to brag. I wasn't special. I just went on more appointments because as a loan officer, if you look at what's closest to the money, where you actually make money, it boils down to two things. You're either meeting with a loan application which is closest to the money, or you're meeting with a referral source that can send you leads. That's it.
A
Yeah.
B
Everything else is necessary but not important.
A
Yeah. It comes back to that old adage, which I need a tattoo of, which is conversations equals contracts.
B
Yeah, love that. I mean it just is. It's like years ago, this is about four years ago, I had a friend come into town and she's a successful nurse, beautiful. And I just was talking to her and we went to dinner and I said, she said, well, I'm really struggling with dating. I said, how can you struggle with dating? You're like a model. She's like, I just struggle. I said, well, let me ask you some questions. Do you go to church Nope. Do you go out socially with friends? No. Are you on any dating apps? Honey, you gotta put some bait in the water in order to catch a fish. Like, you're gonna have to go on 20 or 30 dates to find someone that you really want to date. Yeah, well, I don't want to do that. I said, then you're gonna be single. And it's the same with a loan officer. If you don't want to go out and most of us do want the appointments, that's usually not the problem.
A
Right.
B
You know, I was telling you about that Jolt program where we get people a bunch of appointments. They love the appointments. I have one gal in my program, Oceana. She went from closing four loans a month to nine. So I called her last week, and I'm like, hey, what's. I'm so proud of you. What's going on? She says, well, you guys get me all these appointments. I said, what's that do for you? Because you could have gotten those appointments on your own by just making calls. She says, well, I wouldn't make the calls. I hate. I. I get so scared. Okay. I said, but what has it done for you? She says, todd, when I walk in on Monday morning and I've got seven new big accounts that I'm meeting, I've got two or three loan apps that I've scheduled, I've got two or three other appointments with people I already know, I feel amazing. That's how she said it. Yeah. So when you get a bunch of appointments, part of the psychology is I'm not in scarcity anymore. I'm confident.
A
It's a good point.
B
And I. People just really. It's a very simple. But it's. It's. It's what allows people to build confidence in sales 100%.
A
I love that. That's a really. I think that's a double tap on that point about. I feel confident I'm not in scarcity mode. And I think that shows up for people in their demeanor, in their energy. When you're in scarcity mode, you show up desperate, commission, breath, whatever. Right? All that stuff.
B
Well, we're. At the end of the day, we're animals, right? So my daughter's 15, and she rides horses. Been riding horses. She was 6. And she. One of the things she does at her barn is she rides all the horses that need exercising, plus her horse. She commands every single horse. The trainers are, like. All the horses know not to give Izzy any grief. Like, they. Because she commands them. She's confident they can. And we're animals. We can smell that on people.
A
Right.
B
Like you literally walk in a room and you can tell who's scared, you can tell who lacks confidence, and you could tell who doesn't. And that's such a big key to sales that people don't. I don't think they consciously understand.
A
So, so to, to put a bow on this. Are you saying that one of the answers to how do we close out strong and build momentum for 2026 is have more conversations, make more calls?
B
I'm at a point, yes, I'm at a point where I've coached so many people that don't. By the way, when I say this, do I mean that a loan officer closing 4, 5, 6 loans a month in this market doesn't make any sales calls? No, I don't believe. I'm not saying that. I'm saying they're never doing enough to grow to 10. Because my vision for any loan officer, whether you work for me or not, close 10 loans a month, make 40 or 50 grand, save 7 grand, you have 16 million when you retire. That simple. But you got to get to making 40 grand a month. That's what we're talking about. You're never going to do it the way 99% of loan officers do it. The 4% that, that, that did over 20 million last year. And it granted it was very hard market, not a normal market. So in a normal market, they're probably doubling that. Okay, but if you did that, that's still only 4%. So this is elusive for almost all loan officers. You could, if you can't like do something like jolt or do your program, hire a college kid for 15 bucks an hour or whatever your minimum wage is and pay him 20 bucks for every appointment that shows up. Yeah, I mean it's super. This is not rocket science. You could chat GPT. Give me 10 great scripts for calling realtors that add value that, that they would like. I mean, but if you're the lack of intact that people have and then they wonder why they close one or two or three or four loans a month, it's. It's 10x what they think it is.
A
So give me a. Let's real quick. Let's riff on Joel. Cause I only have a few minutes left. Marketing dot com. We'll put a link in the show notes plus a link to your podcast. Give me the quick 30,000 foot. What are you doing for. I'm curious, like how you obtain the lists for real estate agents. Let's say is that a r Thing, is there a criteria? Do you. Yeah, give me the quick skinny on Joy.
B
So, okay, so I have this vision when I retired from core, I didn't do anything for like a year. And I was just like, in my thinking brain, I was just like, what's the choke point for loan officers? What's the choke point? Well, the choke point is lack of leads or leads that go up and down. Okay, so the choke point is leads. I'm like, how do I solve that? And at first I thought, well, I can't really go sell for him. And then I thought, well, I can't do the in person selling, but I could do everything else. So I end up paying a bunch of money to a bunch of coaches. That and friends like Carl White and Amir said and some, some of my friends and just flew out to see him and be like, I, I have this vision. How do I do it? So what we came up with. So by the way, I came up with this whole framework. Then I tried to coach loan officers how to do it. So I had 90, I think it was 92 loan officers for a year, teaching them how to do all these marketing systems, how to get the lists, how to set up auto texting, just all this stuff. How to make offers, right? Not one of them did it. Not one. They didn't even do 40% of it. Oh, I called an emergency meeting with my team. I said, hey, emergency meeting on Friday morning. I got them all on the call. I think they all thought they were getting fired. I'm like, we're doing this wrong. I said, there's not one client is able to do all the work. We're going to have to do it for them. Now to this day, there's a technologist named Stephen Moore. Stephen speaks up and he says, that's no problem, boss. Like, I'm literally like, don't even know if we can do it. I said, why do you say that? He says, I ran an advertising company for eight years. We did everything from the local coffee shop to Fortune 500 companies. And that company didn't do well because we tried to service 20 different industries. You're just serving one, you're just getting loan officers appointments. This can definitely be done and systematized. So he gave me the confidence to proceed. So we shut down the company for six months, shut everything down and just we went to work on building out all the structure and systems and technology and teachings and offers and do all this. So then we opened it back up. We started slowly adding three, four clients a month. And lo and behold, they all did more loans. We had one lady, one of our first clients, she came aboard, literally called us three weeks into the program. We had gotten her 36 appointments with top producers and she said, stop calling. I can't fit all the appointments in my, I have other things I need to do besides just meet new accounts. So we got really good at setting appointments. We got really good at warming up the audience. We got really good at doing their social media forum. We got really good at pulling the lists because we only target the top 7% of realtors in each area. We only Target the top 5% of financial planners that don't do mortgage loans in their company. So there's a lot of learning we had to do, but we figured it out. And so Jolt is that marketing, advertising and calling company. And then I poach them every week on how to get more sales because it's fine tuned stuff. Like last week we Talked about here's 10 ways that you can demonstration sell to a client. Okay. When we talked about it with all of them, they're like, I've never done any of that. I'm like, well, demonstration selling is one of the most effective ways to sell. So if you're really, if you do a really good loan presentation as an example, like we teach you have the realtor join the meeting and if you do it right, they're going to come out and say like, like used to happen to me, they'd say, dude, I have never seen that kind of presentation that good. Because they, they felt it right. They were with you.
A
I like it.
B
I like it. We teach them sales skills on the coaching calls, but then everything else we do for them. Everything. Yeah.
A
I think what I love about that model is it's, you're going to do certain, the heavy lifting so to speak for them. Obviously they are going to spend time in the sweet spot of actually interfacing with prospects and clients. But what really I think makes this work well is the fact that you're at the helm, the captain guiding this ship along the journey because they need that constant adjustment along the way.
B
Yeah, I mean there's a lot to say. I think sales and owning a business are the two hardest things you can do. So this is hard and it's detailed and it's complicated. But I look at it like this and I tell people, like, look at, let's say I could get you from 150 grand a year to 4 or 500 grand a year. What would that do for your life? I have them Write it down like, well, I could send my kids to college, I could buy another house. We could not fight about mortgage money with my spouse. You know, and they write out all these things. I say, look, it, give me a year to solve the choke point. Give me a year. We'll set a bunch of appointments for you. You'll get a bunch of accounts. If you got two accounts a month, you would have roughly 20 plus at the end of a year. When you look at loan officers that make a half a million dollars or more, they have one thing in common. They have 15 or more accounts. Every time I've tested it, I've been right. So most loan officers, Jeff, they literally have zero to one or two. So I'm like, let me get this right. You tell me that you're a decent salesperson, but you've been doing this business for 10 years and you've got two people who refer you consistently. That's not good sales skills. And I think we're embarrassed to admit that. And once we start getting over our ego, we can start to make change.
A
Yeah.
B
Say, hey, I'm not good at this. I'm just not. And when people reach that point, everything changes. And when they start letting people help them, everything changes.
A
Okay. All right, well, I know we're up against the clock here, so for people who want to learn more about Jolt, I'll put the link in the show notes, but they can go tojolt mortgage marketing dot com. Correct.
B
Yeah. One thing I just disclaimer, we only add three clients a month. So this is not a big program. We're going very slow.
A
It's, it's an application process.
B
It's a process. So I don't want to say, oh, and I actually don't even want to over promote it. What I would say to your listeners, Jeff, don't be afraid to hire someone to set appointments for you. Like.
A
Yeah, that's the takeaway. No matter. Yeah. Because to your point earlier about, you know, with social media real quick is, you know, I was, when we're doing our events and classes, one of the things, and you know, this is like, you should be recording that. Right. So that's become social media content and shorts and people see and you know, you hear the, well, I don't have anybody to record. You know what I mean? I'm just like, okay, that's a mindset thing. But secondly, and then I'll ask, well, do you have teenage children? They'll be like, yes. I go, you've got a built in employee. What are you talking about give me your damn phone?
B
Yeah, it's. I think you're touching on like that curiosity that and do attitude. The growth mindedness that there's a. My favorite saying. And I don't know if someone told me this or I made it up, but there's a solution for every problem.
A
Oh yeah, of course. Right.
B
I don't care what it is. There's a solution. Someone figure it out. Yeah.
A
Well, you've clearly built a solution and I think that's the big takeaway. I think, I love that. If you're listening and you're wondering, you know, maybe you're not right yet for Todd's platform and that's cool, but could you find somebody for 20 bucks an hour to make some appointment calls with you? Could you put a script together using GPT or whatever and tweak it for you and your style and your voice?
B
I think so. Well, Jeff, on your program, like this is a different way of saying the same thing. If I just take your program of the workshops that you teach. Just invite people to the workshops.
A
Yeah.
B
And then call them afterwards for appointments or give them a survey that says do you want to meet with me on this? Like it's simple. There's a sales sequencing is important, but they could just buy your program, hire someone to invite people and then survey them afterwards. Do you want an appointment with me to go deeper? Most of them will say yes. And there's your 10 appointments next week.
A
Exactly. We're trying to solve the same problem. You know what I mean? That's awesome. So listen, I know you gotta go. This has been awesome. I'll also link everything else you have, your podcast, your book, so people can connect with you more because this is just a very small glance or look under the hood of what Todd brings to the table in terms of knowledge and expertise. Clear. Clearly. So I want to say thank you so much, Todd. Appreciate it.
B
Well, thanks, Jeff. And I'll. Like I said, I'll post you this on mine as well and put your links in there so that people can find because I think you've got some great like workshops and stuff that it's hard to do that stuff on your, like it's hard to make all that stuff up. I don't know how many hundreds of hours you guys spent, but it's a lot.
A
It is.
B
That's an easy way to get into the same thing.
A
Yeah. 100%. So I appreciate that. Listeners, you know what to do. Check the links in the show notes. Go follow Todd. Listen to his podcast, grab his book and check out Jolt Mortgage Market. There might be a fit for you, but you got to take the next step. Appreciate you guys tuning in. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. 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.
B
Sam.
Episode: The Fastest Path to 10+ Loans per Month Without the Grind
Host: Geoff Zimpfer
Guest: Todd Scrima, Founder and CEO of Summit Funding
Date: October 10, 2025
This episode dives deep into breaking through the "loan officer plateau"—specifically, how mortgage professionals can grow beyond four or five loans per month to consistently hitting (or exceeding) ten loans without burning out. Veteran coach and top-producing lender Todd Scrima shares his blunt insights on industry cycles, overcoming call reluctance, building scalable systems, and why most originators struggle to grow. Geoff and Todd unpack actionable strategies around building agent relationships, leveraging outbound calling systems, and adopting a true business owner mentality.
“It’s important to realize ... we haven’t had this bad of a market since the 80s. It’s been bad. And I think it’s okay to say that without excuses.”
— Todd (07:03)
“The script is this... I can save you $250 a month now, and if rates go even lower, I’ll refinance you for free within the next year. It’s no risk for you.”
— Todd (09:05)
“So many say ‘I made three calls last week and got one appointment.’ That’s not how the sales math works.”
— Todd (14:08)
“You can have the Ferrari, but if you never put gas in it and you can’t drive it, what’s the point?”
— Todd (22:28)
For more tools and direct links, check the episode show notes.