The #1 loan advisor in Orange County does more, makes more, closes more, and gives more
Entrepreneurs are a special breed of businesspeople. While they’re not necessarily more driven to succeed than those who work for other people, entrepreneurs have to be behind the wheel, completely responsible for their own success.
No one knows this more than Ben Anderson, a branch manager at RPM Mortgage, a division of LendUS. He’s funded more than $1.4 billion in mortgages, and has made it onto Scotsman’s Top Originators list for seven years in a row, six of those years being the top producing loan advisor in Orange County.
For Anderson, being an originator isn’t just about getting loans; it’s about truly understanding your business and how you can best succeed. The market is constantly changing and without that education, at best, you’re never going to become a top producer; at worst, your business will fail.
“To me, the business is radically changing. I call this market 3.0. Market 1.0 was pre-recession, when it was easy; market 2.0 was post-recession, low rates, where it was almost even easier; and now we’re at market 3.0, where you have to be truly independent to make leads work,” Anderson said. “So to truly be successful in the next market’s rally or market five, seven, 10 years later, you need to really understand how to run a business. And if you’re just plugging into that FDIC bank, then you’re not getting that hands-on education, you’re still relying on somebody else to generate your business for you. That type of business has a shelf life and it’s only so long before that type of business is extinct.”
In Anderson’s experience, the way to truly get the education that you need and the ability to take charge of your own success doesn’t come from a bank.
“It’s really simple: there are no banks that I’ve heard of or been a part of that have rolled out a system for how to be successful,” Anderson said. “Nowadays, you need to have a blueprint on how to get your business going, and there isn’t one. I’m very process- and systems-driven, so at the end of the day, it’s about me creating a system for loan originators to be successful.”
That system is The Mortgage Revolution, a program that Anderson has created for originators. The program teaches originators to regain their independence and how to become true entrepreneurs, withstand the markets, use media and branding to their advantage, and work with agents and give them the most possible value. He shares tried and true tips to his own success so that other loan officers out there can follow it point by point and in turn, give the entire industry a lift.
Anderson was a collegiate athlete, and you can see that same disciplined approach in the outline of his Mortgage Revolution plan. The program is 13 separate steps, the first of which is a 30-day bootcamp (“21 days makes a habit, 30 days will change your life”).
Of the hundreds of thousands of loan officers in the U.S., Anderson is one loan advisor who has been around since before the Great Recession, muddling through and figuring out ways to produce when other originators got out of the business. Anderson encourages other advisors not just to anticipate the needs of your business, but to really understand how you can apply specific techniques to your model and put yourself in control of your own success.
“With technology taking over, you have to understand how that can help your business. And unfortunately, if you’re looking at FDIC banks, larger institutional lenders, they don’t allow you to use that kind of marketing to run your business because they’re more concerned with the brand being the engine that drives the business, than the originator being their own brand. So if you’re an originator and you want to be successful, you’ve got to find a way to make your brand the engine that runs the business, not the business the engine that runs you. You’re going to lose out on the customer’s experience directly.”
Anderson’s motto is ‘Do more, make more, close more, and give more.’ Intense, sure. But so is he.
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