Happy Sunday Everyone:
I had the opportunity on Wednesday to interview our CEO for a companywide end of year review. At the risk of sounding like a kiss ass, it’s enlightening to hear the perspective of someone running a company our size. We talked about where we’re winning, where we need focusing on, the industry as a whole, and what the future could look like based on a variety of factors.
The saying goes; “don’t take yourself too serious”. Depending on where you are in your life, I actually think that’s bad advice. I think we should take ourselves serious. In my mind, taking myself, serious means trusting myself. It means if I say I’m going to do something I’m going to do it. If what I say I’m going to do is super important to me, I’m going to write it down, I’m going to put a plan behind it, I’m going to share it, and then I’m going to go to work on executing it. I bring this up here in the hopes of you taking yourself serious in 2026. My dad used to say of the mortgage business (when we were all 1099), it’s a brutal business because nobody actually fires you, if you don’t do business, you just fade away. Having no plan will likely result in no result. Why would you want that?
I want to give you 3 scenarios where I’m hopeful you’d consider the concept:
- In talking to Ron (our CEO), our team announced in late 2024 that our projected loan volume for 2025 would be 52 billion. We will come within 100 mill of hitting this number. For those math wizards, that’s 99.8%. Better said, we achieved 99.8% of our goal. This is with 8000 employees. The business intelligence department is doing their job well.
- Our division (aka The Buffaloes)-we announced in 2024 that our projected loan volume would be 3.2 billion. YTD we are at 3.064 bill with 2.5 weeks left in the year. We are currently at 95.8% of our goal. We fund approx. 65 mill a week. Assuming this continues, we will hit 99.8% of our goal.
- Our personal production (team hunter), we announced in 2024 that our projected loan volume would be 180 mill. YTD our team is at 149.8 mill with 20 mill funding before year end. We will hit 94.4%. And yes, I find it both interesting and slightly annoying that the largest variance was my own personal production. I’ll save the excuses for a victim version of sunday thoughts.
I’m hopeful any loan officer, and possibly a Realtor, would find this both interesting and worthy of consideration as to why it would make sense for you to put some thought into how you’re going to spend your 2080 business hours worked in 2026.
I recently discussed this on a business planning call with our division, but worth noting again:
- 10-15% chance of hitting a goal that you think about. What’s crazy is this is where the majority of people live.
- 25-35% chance of hitting your goal by writing it down.
- 40-50% chance of hitting your goal by writing it down and outlining action items.
- 55-65% chance of hitting your goal with making a public commitment i.e. sharing your actionable goal and plan with someone i.e. Leader, coach, manager, coworker.
- 70-80% chance of hitting your goal when you add weekly accountability. I give Brigitte a daily scorecard of my activity as an example. In 2026 I’m redoing that scorecard based on my priorities for this year.
I’m sure I’ve lost some readers at this point, but it begs the question of why wouldn’t you spend the time to plan for your future? It goes back to taking yourself seriously. There are 2080 hours in a working year. Why would you not lock yourself in a coffee shop, a hotel, or your home, and spend a worthwhile amount of time planning for your future with a written-out plan to execute on it, and then sharing it with people who are rooting for your success, and want to contribute toward it?
Business planning isn’t a motivation tool; you’re literally engineering the probability of your success.