About 5 years ago, I was doing what most of us do. I had a corporate job making sales for the machine. In my case it was mortgages. I loved helping people buy their dream homes but I hated the paperwork. I felt like there had to be a better way to serve those around me.
As much as I loved my clients, I really loved the people I worked with. Well, that’s not true, let me clarify. I loved the salespeople I worked with. They gave me energy and it was always a cool feeling when they came to me for advice.
In 2010 I lost my ability to originate mortgages. My license was not accepted and I thought my world was ending. I’d been making significant money for years and in an instance it was all gone away. I was beat but not beaten.
On night I was smoking some good over at a friend’s house and I had that “AH-HA’ moment. I had been good at mortgages and the crews everywhere I worked always asked me for help, why wouldn’t I start charging to help?
I made a really shitt landing page and video from my laptop and made an “infomercial” about they way I did millions in monthly mortgage closings. The video sold some but not a ton. It gave me the light that shined and showed me I was on to something.
From there I went all in. I offered to manage any and every LO and Agent’s social media that would let me. At one time we were posting 5 times a day, on three platforms for 70+ people. That’s a lot of writing but it didn’t matter. I was passionate about helping these people who took a chance on me when no one believed in social media.
From there I learned more lessons about myself and the marketplace. I got to know how people responded to certain types of posts. What private messages resulted from the posts I made and more. I got inspired every time one of my clients got a deal from something I did or taught them to do.
The only problem was that I was charging only $100 a month and it was a SHIT TON of work. I was splitting the money in 3 ways too. So I was bringing in thousands for my clients and pennies for me. It was a good thing I loved what I did.
Then one day after many of my clients experienced dramatic results I decided to raise my price. I had numbers, info and proof of what could be done. I didn’t have to fake it to make it. I got some people to take a chance on me, it worked and now I wanted to profit immensely from my passion.
From that point when I made sales calls, I had real numbers. I could say things like “out of 70 clients 61 of them are 6 figure plus earners. They’ve each increased business by a medium of xyz…” When you have facts and numbers people take you seriously. My price went from $100 to $1000 overnight.
Guess what? When my price jumped to $1000 more people jumped on board. Turned out, people wanted me to teach them what I did and not just do it for them. They were more than willing to pay a premium because they had facts about ROI.
My next problem was keeping up with clients. When I got to 10 clients that I was doing weekly calls with, I struggled to keep them handled and sell new clients into the business. Balance was impossible it seemed.
That’s when I came up with the mastermind format. Instead of 10 calls each week I could make one conference call and we could all contribute to each other. This also empowered the group to give more feedback and continue to be competitive.
My next problem was that some of my clients that had been with me 6 months or so were way more advanced than the newbies coming in. It created overwhelm for the new people. It would frustrate the group because newbie questions would take up time from the advanced guys.
The recorded calls and hangouts we had done over the previous six months explained everything the new people needed to know. So I created a flow system to keep the new folks on track and learning and the long time clients super happy too.
