All originators are invited to collaborate with Top Originators and learn winning strategies to implement in their workplace
Conferences are great in that they get originators out of the office and into one place to gain insights on industry trends, products, and services. The flaw, however, is that most conference sessions are generally conversations *at* the audience, not *with* them. Originators hear about strategies and techniques, but don’t necessarily touch the day-to-day, nitty gritty details of implementation or provide opportunities for troubleshooting.
This is different.
This, the Originator Excellence Workshop, is a two-day session where originators of all channels—broker and retail—put aside their company shield, roll up their sleeves, and learn techniques to hone their craft from the masters. Organized by AIME and sponsored by Mortgage Professional America, this workshop will feature breakout whiteboard sessions and Q&A periods in addition to panels with top originators and industry thought leaders on their struggles as well as their successes.
The goal is to take a holistic approach to providing all originators the chance to learn from each other, regardless of their operation style.
“The first thing I heard from some brokers was like, ‘Why are you collaborating with bankers?’ ‘Why are you willing to share our secrets with bankers?’ To me, that’s a bad narrative. The way I look at it is, for me as a mortgage broker and a loan originator, I want to hear from other successful loan originators, and I want to hear what they’re doing to be unique, to think outside the box, to win business,” said Anthony Casa, president of Garden State Home Loans and AIME Chairman.
“We stay pretty high level at our event so we don’t get into the weeds of how we’re doing our day-to-day business. So to me, deemphasizing all those things and really focusing on the fact that we’re all just loan originators and our entire objective for showing up is to share and also to consume some level of knowledge or some level of information that helps me get better when I go back to my office on Monday.”
There’s a time and place for the independent broker versus retail channel discussion, but this isn’t it. For two days, attendees are invited to put aside that rhetoric and be open to hearing what originators who are more successful than they are have to share, regardless of where they work. Walk into the workshop like a sponge, absorbing everything from how more successful people approach realtors to develop relationships, or the way they insert personal touches to their borrower relationships. Attendees are invited to walk in with questions and prepare to shift their way of thinking about their business.
At the same time, there will be a strong peer-to-peer engagement aspect to the workshop, which includes built-in collaboration time and opportunities for originators to discuss and work through the ways that various strategies and techniques are playing out in their specific markets. Origination isn’t a one-size-fits-all business, so there’s incredible value to sharing with many others and understanding what works for business of similar structures.
“The whole thing is to have an evolving conversation, where it’s not just three to four people up on stage or up in front of the audience pounding their chest, it’s more or less ‘here’s my story, here’s what we’re doing, and this is what’s been successful for us. And at the same time, here’s where we’ve struggled,” Casa said.
If you’re an originator who has ever wondered, ‘What’s that originator doing differently than I am? Are they working harder? Where did they struggle along the way? How is their business development strategy different? Would it work for me, with my business, in my market?’ This is your chance to find out.
The Originator Excellence Workshop will take place December 12th-13th at Power Plant Productions in Philadelphia, PA. Register today and be part of the conversation.
