Steve Tytler

I can tell you how to DOUBLE your income.

Seriously!

The secret:  ACCOUNTABILITY!

How many of us make make plans for the day with the best of intentions of making calls to Realtors, working on our marketing, or other productive money-making activities — but when the day is over we look back on what we accomplished and we did few, if any, of the things we planned to do.

Being “busy” all day is not the same thing as being productive.

Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.  My wife will tell you that I am the king of ADD!

So I made a New Year’s Resolution to get an Accountability Partner this year.  And I gotta tell you it is working out GREAT!

Here’s how it works … every day (and I mean EVERY day) my accountability partner calls me at 5:00 PM sharp and we have a two-minute conversation that goes like this:  I tell him what I did during the day to make me 1) Wealthy  2) Healthy   3) Happy and I tell him what I will do tomorrow for those same 3 goals.   He does the same for me. 

We do this every day and it has worked wonders for both of us.  I feel guilty looking at the clock knowing that David will be calling me at 5:00 PM, ready or not, so I better do everything that I said I was going to do or I will feel bad telling him that I didn’t get it done.

And that’s an important point:  You must respect your accountability partner enough to actually feel bad if you have to tell them that you didn’t do what you said you would do.  If you don’t care what they think about it, it won’t be nearly as possible.

My buddy and mortgage market mentor Carl White told me at our marketing mastermind meeting in Tampa Bay last December that having an accountability partner will “double your income, guaranteed.”  I was a little skeptical that the results would be THAT dramatic, but after one month I’m convinced.

Having an accountability partner has forced me to actually FINISH projects that I have been planning to do for months.

I can’t let “call reluctance” keep me from making my prospecting calls for Realtor referral partners because I have to answer to David every day at 5:00 PM.

So I strongly encourage everybody reading this to find an accountability partner that you like and respect and hold each other accountable for your daily plans.  You will be amazed at the results.

Just be sure to follow these simple rules:

1) Call at the same time every day.  You can do it at 8:00 AM, 12:00 Noon, 6:00 PM … whatever time works best for both of you.  Stick to the schedule so that you never plan a meeting or anything else that would interfere with your daily call.

2) Designate one person as the “caller.”  You don’t want to be in a situation where you say “I thought you were going to call” .. “no, I thought YOU were going to call.”  David calls me every day (M-F) I never call him.  That way we both know what are responsibilites are.  I have to be near a phone at 5:00 PM to take his call and he has to make the call every day at 5:00 PM.

3) Keep it SHORT!  Two minutes is plenty. No chit-chatting and no criticizing the other person’s plans and/or lack of accomplishments.  Now I admit that we sometimes break this rule and comment on each other’s plans, but only if the other person is open to the critism.   It’s best to just stick to the facts.

Give this a try for at least a month and I’ll bet you’ll be very surprised at how much more you get accomplished.

Back in February, I made a couple videos showing a LIVE demonstration of a Craigslist Mortgage Marketing Strategy.

That strategy still works today … but you don’t have to take MY word for it. Read on …

The weekend before last (September 24-27) I spent a few days with about 50 loan orignators from all over the country at Carl White’s Mortgage Marketing Animals mastermind retreat in Lake Tahoe. Here are a few of pictures of the retreat:

At the retreat, I met a loan originator from Tucson, Arizona named Joe Small who joined Mortgage Marketing Animals after watching my Craigslist marketing videos.

Joe Small & Steve Tytler - Lake Tahoe, CA September 26, 2009

It was cool meeting Joe face-to-face for the first time, but what was REALLY cool was when he told me that he got his first purchase loan about TEN MINUTES after joining Mortgage Marketing Animals a few weeks ago!

Watch the video below to hear Joe Small tell how those Craigslist videos that I made back in February got him started making money TODAY:

I was able to pull “Mortgage Marketing Animal” Carl White off to the side during a break in the mastermind retreat last weekend at Lake Tahoe.

In an EXCLUSIVE 7-minute video interview, Carl gave me two secrets that have helped him become a million dollar mortgage producer.

To see the video, enter your name and email address in the form below and I will email you a link to my exclusive video interview:

I’m off to a lodge in South Lake Tahoe this week to spend a couple days hanging out with my buddy Carl White and about 40 other mortgage “Marketing Animals.”

This is a truly unique marketing group.

Unlike the many mortgage and real estate marketing pitch fests I have been to over the years, at these retreats nothing is sold. We just hang out and listen to a few speakers and stay up all night swapping marketing ideas.

We literally talk marketing 18 hours a day for a couple days. It’s awesome — but draining.

I’ll post a video report when I get back.

Some people may think I jumped the gun a couple of months ago when I said the refi party may be over … I updated that post a few weeks later … but I still think you are crazy if you are not working on building up your PURCHASE loan business. If you live by refis alone, you will die when the refis dry up (and they always do).

Another mortgage “fad” that may be running out of gas is the Loan Modification business.

This was all the rage last year about this time because mortgage rates were at 6% and business was slow for a lot of loan officers.

We briefly considered getting into the business ourselves, but after talking to a few “loan modifcation companies” we decided to work with somebody we knew because too many of them sounded shady.

I got some info on how to do loan mods and gave it to an attorney who owns the escrow company that we use for most of our business. He checked it out and did a handful of loan mods. We never did any, but we both decided it was a big pain in the butt and not worth our time.

Besides, mortgage rates dropped and we were hit with a refi boom in November and December of last year.

Now, the Federal Trade Commission is reportedly considering banning foreclosure rescue and loan modification companies from collecting fees in advance, and new restrictions on how those companies can advertise their services as part of a crackdown on fraud.

The FTC also announced civil charges against two California-based companies accused of advertising that they could obtain mortgage modifications in virtually all cases, and allegedly doing little or nothing to help consumers who paid large upfront fees.

You can read more in this article on Inman News:

http://www.inman.com/news/2009/09/17/feds-may-restrict-mortgage-rescue-fees

I think this is good news.

In my experience, most of the Loan Modification companies were run by guys who were in the subprime mortgage business before that went belly up.

You know what the subprime guys did to the mortgage industry, so I can’t say I’m sorry to see the Loan Mod guys reined in.

So if you’ve been pushing Loan Mods and refis … get out there and talk to some Realtors and build up some PURCHASE money referral business before it’s too late.

I’m telling you … once the housing market turns loan officers will be begging Realtors for business … now is the time to beat the competition to the punch, while the housing market is slow and Realtors are still hurting. Give them some marketing assistance and help them out, and build a long-term source of referral business for yourself.