Got to love the mortgage business... maybe not now

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• Finally a move away from fun stuff and into big business (this was in 1996).  A friend calls me and asks if I would like to salvage one of his branch offices in the mortgage business
• I’m on a roll so I see little risk in giving it a shot…besides I know a little about the business so it would be an excellent challenge to test my skills in a new industry
• My job was to motivate a bunch of old over the hill loan agents…LOL

So not knowing any better I set out to do just that and gave it my all for 18 months.  In just 18 months I had turned one of the worst performing offices out of the 20 or so California offices into one of the best performing offices.  How did I do that?  I used and put in place various tactics that brought in more agents, moved to a large office space (got to think big to get big), hired an ex-athlete to be the company spokesperson but most importantly I ran the following ad.  “Think you can’t qualify for a home loan…think again.  Think you don’t make enough money…think again.  Think you have too much debt…think again.  Stop thinking and call us today.”  This ad was so successfully that we had to turn of the phones.  We had 100’s of people calling us for weeks.  In 18 months we went from a paltry 5 million in originations to over 40 million.  Finally a success in a field outside my niche.  Nothing could stop me now or so I thought.