Finding Balance: Setting Up Your Mortgage Business to Run Without You

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the next exciting edition of lending leadership with the mortgage pros. Robert Fillyaw here joined as always with, Tom Mills and Dave Holland. Hey, guys. How are y'all today? Good. How are you doing, buddy? Good, man. I'm doing well. Feeling feeling a little, relaxed, a little, you know, refreshed.

We just got back from our president's club trip to the beautiful Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Had a great time. And, you know, it's great getting to spend some time with our our top producers and really just unwinding. But it made me think that, you know, there's a lot of people in our industry out there where we were to say, hey. We're gonna go to another country for three or four days. Like, they would just fill with anxiety and dread to think about actually being away from their business and being away from work for that long. Or what what's happened to a lot of people that I know, they would go and end up working three quarters of the time that they're there. So I thought what might be cool today is for us to talk about setting up your business and and your team for success to be able to take a vacation, to have a business that can run without you.

What do you guys think of that topic?

You know, we talked about it when we were Dominican. It's a timely topic. You know? I may or may have not shared with you guys. I asked my wife, like, five or six years ago. I said, how come we never took, like, vacations when we were younger without kids? I got four kids. And, she said because you were always working. So, you know, when when and I was too afraid to leave because the way I had things set up, you know, I'd have to toss it to a loan officer. Yeah.

Time to figure out.

You were just working in a different location.

It it

was it was bad. It was bad. Bad. And that was another occasion.

No. It's funny that you mentioned that. I'm I'm remembering. So I tell people all the time the best thing about our job is that you can do it anytime from anywhere. The worst thing about our job is that you should do it anytime from anywhere. Actually, like, it literally there's a lot of jobs out there where, like, if you're not at your job, you you just can't work. You're not doing it. Ours isn't that way.

I remember, we went to the Dominican for my mother in law's fiftieth birthday. So this was this was a number of years ago before the Wi Fi, before all of that. And I had one of those Air cards, like, Internet Air cards, like, you slid into your laptop and you got Internet over cell phone. You remember those, like, way back in the day? Yeah. Go ahead. And I I had a loan going sideways, so I'm I'm just gonna log in real quick, you know, from the Dominican and check on it. I get back and have, like, a $3,600 bill for the forty five minutes I was on the Internet in another country over the cell service. Right? So to your point, Dave, like, it costs me money trying to work while on vacation, but I digress.

We're we're getting a little off topic. So how how do how do you go about like, if you had that LO out there, it's like, yeah. I I hear you guys. I feel you. This is an issue that I face. How do you overcome that? Like, what steps do you do? What's the pre vacation game plan, if you will, to be ready?

That's exactly where I was going. You know? If you're the one man show versus you're someone that has a team of three, totally different story. Right? But here's the key here. I think, you know, to be the guy, the girl, the team leader that has the team of three, you had to have really done the right things for 90% of your time to be in that position, to have that team, to even be able to go away on vacation and rely on them. So it you know, where does it start? It It starts with doing the consistent things day in, day out so you have some direct support tied in to your team, and it becomes much easier there. Right? If you don't have that, you know, let's say you're an LO is doing a couple of deals a month where look. Let's be real. If in a we're gone for a week, you close three, four loans a month, you know, you're not able to work.

That means you're losing one, two loans. You lose a half your income, and and you're going away. So, like, that's the stress that that they that that loan originators can can deal with. So, you know, without having, you know, someone you can rely on, leadership that believes in you getting away, it's really tough. You know? You really have to, at that point, you're gonna have to work some. You're going to have to have some some check ins and some ways of getting back to people, responding to people, directing people without, like, being in involved a lot and then having some time block that makes sense and and being true to that. But, without that without a team and without leadership that's like, hey. We've got you.

We're gonna sign such and such to help you. You know? It gets it gets real tough being real.

You gotta find almost an LO at your company. You know? Hey, Bob. Hey, Sally. When I'm away, you cover my desk. And when you're away, I'll cover your desk. Something like that. And the vacation days Yes. Have to be fair, have to line up.

You know? I I remember before I'd go away, a couple I went to Africa 1 time. I went to Ireland and France Two other times. And it was before you could really get good international email. Now everything, Wi Fi, it's easy. Right? And I I was filled with so much anxiety before I went, and I was trying to get so much done. It the first couple days of vacation, you know, I I couldn't even relax because I was so worried about my business. It was like leaving, like, an infant newborn at home. Right.

For a week.

I mean, it's sad. Right?

You're, like, calling to check-in. Yeah.

You you know, now now I go away. You know? We went to Dominican for four days. I went to Argentina for a week and a half and, you know, full disclosure, I did check my email. Right? But I was off of my team email. So I was I was, you know, probably getting 15% of the emails that I normally get.

Well, it's a different thing to check your email because you want to. And, you know, like, we we're guys that we wanna like, we do wanna check-in. We wanna see what's going on. We wanna stay abreast of of, you know, what's what's happening with our company. It's a very different thing to check it because of that versus you have to, and something's not going to get done if you don't. Like, those are two very different things.

The only person I talked to besides my wife a couple times when I was in Argentina was Tom. I was sitting on a balcony. I called

Go ahead.

And I I I it was, like, the second to last day. I kinda wanna talk with Tom and see what was going on at the company. Right?

What was funny is it was real early, and I had you seen you responded to an email. I'm like, I'm gonna call him. I bet he's, like, sitting there working right now. It was it was like a Thursday. I missed you, man.

I like that. What what what the hell, guys? I I didn't get looped in on this call. Now I'm a little jealous. I'm not gonna lie. I'm a little butthurt. So so when you're getting ready to you know, I I you you guys know I'm a big systems and process guy. So let's talk about the actual preparation. Like, when you're getting ready to go, you got a vacation that you're planning.

Right? We all know that there's there's the steps to actually plan the trip. But what systems checklist, what delegation do you do? What what level of communication do you have with your referral partners and clients? And I listen. I agree with you, Tom. This is going to to vary based on the LO and what team support that you have. So the answers can vary all over the the, you know, kind of the board. But how far in advance do you start telling people if you do tell people? Like, what strategies do you like what takeaways do you guys have

that are real world examples that you've used? So here here are the basics. Just a very raw basics is if you have a team email address, get off that team email address. Right? Just get your personal you know? So I have a team Holland email address, and I have d Holland email address. Get off the team email address because that's gonna be the majority of your CRM notifications, conversation logs, you know, whatever. Get off that. So asterisk real quick, Dave. Let me let me jump in asterisk.

If you have a team and you have not set up a and you have not set up a team email address, I'll challenge anyone. You're a % wrong. You need to do that. You have to get out of your email. It will

change your life. Go ahead, Dave. It's a no brainer. Yeah. It's a no brainer. So get off the team email address, obvious things. Set up an out of office on your email. Right? Set up set up an out of office on your text messages.

Now I have a personal cell phone that not not a lot of my realtor partners and customers called, but but I I did set up an out of office voice mail on that. You can do an out of office text if you put it in drive mode. It's not foolproof, but you can. And personally, I don't tell I don't send that in email to my realtor partners that, hey. I'm out of town. Because what that's gonna do, hey. Dave's and I have a team. They're gonna think my business is not as well attended to.

Actually, not the truth. I mean, when I went to Argentina, they got left. I had 17 loans in my pipeline. I came back. I had 30. Right? So I should go away more often. That's a good vacation. It's a good vacation.

Yeah. And I don't think I'm being dishonest, not telling my agents, but, I mean, business gets done without me, and I am reachable in case there's, like, a in case there's a major fire. So I plan I I make sure everyone on my team is there, that no one else is on vacation. It's just, like, real obvious stuff.

By the way, some of our listeners, as Robert mentioned his team email, we we can make that available, our policy, how we set that up. We have a document for that, kinda help you guide through it, happy to help anybody. I really believe in it. You're absolutely right, Robert. It's everything, the difference of freedom when you're away, to know the emails are being responded to quickly.

Yeah. And when you go away, here's a pro tips slightly off topic. Take your email notification off your phone. It it was one of the biggest things that probably decreased my anxiety by 15% a day. If I look down and there's, like, a 25 unread, emails on my phone, I'm like, woah. Take it off. It's an easy setting. We're not gonna get into it, but just Google it.

I'll I'll

I'll take that a step further, Dave, and I would challenge everyone out there to take it off all the time. Yeah. Every day.

Oh, no. Well, mine's off

every day. Yeah. That's what I'm doing. Off every day. So if if I am at a point where I can check email, I open it, and it'll pull the email in, and then I check it. But that way, red circles drive me nuts. Right? So The only notifications I have

on my phone now are text messages and phone calls. I don't have any social media on my phone anymore. All yeah. It's it's basically it's I could

have a burner, and I'd be okay. Dave goes down on a social media rep.

Foot phone for Dave.

So let's get into if you don't have a team, how do you prepare?

How how do what do you do then?

Well, number one, you ask you you go to your you should go to your leader, your boss, your manager, and say, hey. I'm going away. You know? What do you what can we sit down and talk about it? You know? I think that's where it starts, number one.

Through Ramon, you gotta sit down. Can cover me.

Yeah. What can we do?

Now that we're talking, we should let some of our LOs know to come to us. I think most know to come to us without teams. Yeah. But we should

really well. We've had many of them go away. We've and they've they've very much used the, the help. Is there a way? Yeah. And and I'm I'm happy for that. You find that people come back more recharged when they can actually check out a little bit. It's really worth giving them a a a lending hand for a week. And they'll help them set up the process.

Did it cost us money too? They lose a loan to loans? Like, our manager lose the loan. That's us too. They should be into that business with them. They don't wanna lose business.

Yeah. I do think if if, you know, if you're gonna go away and you're a single loan officer, you don't have that team, I think the it changes things just a little bit. You're now if that's me, I'm probably not setting an an out of office or an out of text or right? And what I am gonna do, though, the reality of your single loan officer, you're gonna have someone to help you. You want them to be able to do the heavy lift lifting. You're still gonna have to direct traffic. Right? So the reality of that is in this in this job, in this career, if you're a single loan officer, when you go on vacation, you're still going to likely have to work a little bit. The key to that is to time block it on your time, your schedule, and be comfortable with that. Set an hour in the morning and an hour in the in the evening to check-in direct traffic, make sure things are good, nothing slips through the cracks, and stick to that.

That's the key.

I agree with that exact approach. Like, I'm the, early get up before everybody, creep out on the balcony, grab my laptop and a cup of coffee, and and love life for for an hour and catch up and, you know, see what I can get done. And then that, like, before, you know, you come in from the day or on vacation, you're getting ready, like, before dinner and all that. Like, take that hour there, recap. Then people heard from you in the in the in the beginning of the day, the end of the day, you weren't really gone. You know, you may have gone a total gap of maybe six hours not getting back to a certain thing, but that's the approach I've been, Robert.

It's also this is, you know, this is probably a whole another subject, but when you're gone, you have to prioritize what gets your attention. Right? And and, really, it's it should be the same prioritization as when you're here. Capturing leads is always first and foremost, making sure you're bringing the business in. Right? But some of the stuff, like, it's okay, especially if you have a dedicated process or if someone is covering you. The questions, the the maintenance type questions, those can lag a little bit as long as you communicate. Like, if that's a client with me in process and they're asking a a maintenance type question, I would say if if my processor can answer it or my loan partner, whoever, I would pull them in and say, hey. They're gonna answer it. Or I'd reply to the client and be like, hey.

Got your got your email, text, call, whatever. I'm actually out of town. I'll be back now, and I'll get back with you then. And as long as you set that expectation and you're not ghosting people, they're going 99% of the people in the in out there are gonna be fine with that. And, frankly, the ones that aren't probably aren't people you wanna work with anyway.

Yeah. Good point. The detailed message is key too. So you get a voice mail, and it's saying, hey. This is Tom. You received my voice mail. You know, actually, I've seen a lot of people lately that that change their voice mail daily, and I think that's really smart. Like, hey.

Today is March such and such. Today, I'm going to be unavailable returning calls. However, you can do this. If if you're calling about a application, you can direct to my, you know, web app, complete that, and me and my team will be on it. If you have an urgent question, you can reach out to this person because you should have had like, who's your person of of in you know, handling your loans and process or escalations or things like that? And leave that detailed message And then say, I'll be checking my messages between this time and this time, and I'll return your call. You know?

They may be delayed a little bit.

And, hey, if the matter's urgent and requires immediate attention, you can text me, and you'll see that very little are gonna take that. You know? But if you got a text, like, you probably should jump on that. You know? And you'll but that's very, very small amount. I mean, in a week, you may take that one time. You know? Two times.

So we we we've shifted a little bit to talking about, you know, why while we're actually away, and you're actually in the midst of taking your time off, which is a Don't feel

where I wanna be. Where I wanna be.

I love you you stole my thunder, damn it, Dave. I was just about to say that. I wanna spend a few minutes here. Right? Like, guys, what we do is a grind, and it takes a lot out of us. And, you know, we provide a high level of service. You're very engaged. You gotta think you're dealing with, you know, a a lot of different people, a lot of different personalities on every transaction. There's timelines.

Our job is pretty stressful. Right? It's it's one of the best jobs in the world, but it's still pretty stressful. Taking time away and actually disengaging and and recharging your batteries and resting and refreshing is so important. You cannot feel guilty about doing it and unplugging. Right? It's vital to your mental health. It's vital to your success. So anyone out there that's listening, if you go on a trip and you feel guilty, you feel like, you know, whatever the case may be, stop it. I I don't know how to tell you to stop it other than to say stop it.

Or do you guys have any tips and tricks?

You'll feel guilty for that. Or you're saying you won't don't feel guilty, like, for you know, you'll feel guilty if you, if you don't enjoy your time.

It it it's a slow I always say it's a slow decoupling from your business. Right? I I want every deal I can get, but not at an extreme cost. Every vacation I I like, when we were just away, did I have my phone in in the beach bag? I did, but I only checked it every, like, ninety minutes to two hours. And it was just a maintenance check. Hey. Is there anything on fire? Does my team need me? Is there anything burning down? If there wasn't, and there was only, like, two true emergencies, one one was really not only one true emergency while I was away. So you you just gotta get used to it, and you gotta tell yourself, like, taking a vacation, it's it's normal. Right? Because most most LOs work seven days a week.

Right? Yeah. So take taking, like, a week off or three or four days off, and if you have if you have a team or trust people who are covering for you, then then just slip away. You know?

Try to relax. Letting go is hard to do. You know, one thing that I did, in my career at a point was I would have what I would call a staycation. Right? And so I would essentially be gone as far as my team, my clients, my real it it would be like I'm out of pocket. You can't get with me. Meanwhile, I'm working on something in my business, something new that I wanna implement, maybe some new piece of tech we were gonna roll, some what whatever the case may be. Right? And it gave me the ability to be comfortable being unplugged while I'm still here to jump in if I need to. Right?

Practice vacation. You were taking a practice vacation.

Practice vacation. Right? And it and it did. Like so then when I'm out of pocket now, like, I don't have that anxiety and that dread because I mean, I've I've been used to being out of pocket, and it also showed me any gaps or weaknesses as I was building my team. What did I need to address? What got missed? What needed to be fixed? So, you know, that's almost a practice vacation while you're away and you come back. Now you're on post vacation. Right? How do you how do you reenter? How do you, you know I I know that in the past, what I would do is I would come back from vacation, and I the next twenty four to eight the next eighteen to twenty four hours, I was just nonstop because I felt like I had to catch up on everything right then. And it it almost erased the positive impact of my vacation. What do you guys do when you come back?

I mean, maybe I shouldn't say this on the call, but or on the podcast, but on the plane ride home, I try to clear all my emails and answer a lot of the emails. Not like I'm frantic, but then I make a list to of items that I have to do. And it's not stuff like, you know, send a send a cost sheet to Fred and Judy. It's nothing like that because my team's taking care of it. But all the big picture items that I missed that I have to get to and put off, I remember what I have to do, and I try to grind it out, you know, when I get home on Monday. It's almost good to tell people you're still out of town for an extra day so you can get caught up on stuff. And I Yeah. I never try to come home on a Sunday.

No. I I could just about Saturday.

I was going the same direction. I like a day gap in between the if I was away you know, hey. Just two days, a weekend, whatever. You know, a long weekend, not a big deal. But if you're going, like, five plus days Yeah. Essentially a week, I absolutely need a day gap to, you know, flag the emails. I need to go back through, look at them, set time in a calendar, adjust some things, make sure I count for this, account for that. You know? Every just go then you go in, like, not feeling, like, completely overwhelmed.

On Monday.

Well, because then on Monday, you're just reacting, right, to every I think that's coming at you. And I have my team give me a rundown of what I missed. If there's anyone, you know, a customer, a realtor partner, financial planner, LO, anyone I need to touch, Wama, the first day when I get back. Right? But, you know, on that Sunday, you know, this past Sunday when we got back, I wasn't, I didn't work like a maniac or anything like that, but I did catch up on some items that I need to catch up on. And I got up early Monday morning and, you know, today's Wednesday, and I'm in a good place.

Yeah. Here's the thing too, guys. You know, You have to build the team that wants you to go away. Like, you have to empower your team. You know? So I'm about now I'm finally going away. Now I'm going to empower you. It's it's really about how you lead your team every day and how they feel empowered every day. Like, they you know, no disrespect to you, but your team probably embraces you going away.

They're just

Oh, well, they they like they like when I'm gone. Let's go.

You know? Know.

Let's

get Dave out of our hair for a couple

And then they wanna they wanna be able to throw it in your face that they had a better week with you gone than they did with you here. Like, why that that's make that team. Create that

That's powerful.

You know? Create that team. And and everything everything else that we're talking about is really easy, y'all. Really easy when you have that team.

Yeah. No doubt. I I love the, you know, the the come home on Saturday is something that we started doing probably two or three years ago, and it's such a game changer. Because then Sunday, you wake up. You know? You're at home already. Get to relax a little bit. Like, this trip we just got back from just kinda lazed around, honestly, on Sunday. I don't know.

06:00, seven o'clock at eve in the evening. I got on my email. I spent about an hour just cleaning up, you know, making it to do list maintenance. That way Monday, I was ready to go and, you know, dug out really fast. So, pro tip there for anyone that is getting away, come back a day early and, be ready to go hit the ground running on your your first true day back.

If you curveball come on Monday, it was nice to, it was nice that I was paying back a a hit at the time because my day was a little hectic. Yeah. Monday was

We definitely got a curveball and had to No.

Another day in the middle of the business.

No. Another another day. Hey. Listen. I wanna I wanna pivot a little bit as we talk about pivoting before we wrap up. I'm gonna throw a few questions out there to you guys and and see, you know, maybe a little bonus content. Do you guys have any vacation horror stories when you were gone and something you know, I I told you about my $3,000, air card bill. Do you guys have any any vacation stories or something that's just totally went sideways while you were gone?

I mean, I'm sure there was a number of one off deals or people I I lost transactions or things. Nothing nothing jumps out, which is good.

I remember one. I was going this is probably, like, I don't know, o seven, o '8, and we were I I was in the Atlanta Airport talking to a client because I I had already started my trip, but I hadn't let go. I was a single LO and, you know, had someone cover me, but it was a pricing conversation I wanted to handle. And I promised this customer that I was gonna lock a rate for them and ran out of time before I had to get on the plane to fly to Hawaii. Right? Fast forward by the time I got to where I could actually lock the rate price. It was it was that day where pricing had shot up, like, a hundred basis points in twenty four hours, and I ended up it ended up costing me, like, $5,000 to honor the rate that I said I was gonna lock for them. Right? So what I should have done in hindsight is had been on vacation and not making those commitments when I wasn't in a place where I could, you know, pull them all the way through. So learn from that.

Yeah. I mean, again, a lot of my vacations were in places. I I would do it intentionally. I I didn't mention this in the beginning. I would go on backpacking trips for four or five days where I couldn't do anything, and that it it it was like it forced me to get away. Like, there was no cell phone coverage. There was nothing.

Yep. I don't have any horror stories, but I absolutely have regrets, you know, from earlier time in my career before I kinda figured out how to balance it and how to, you know, how to do this thing. Right? You know? You know, you look back and, you know, you learn a lot as you kinda grow up and and you get further into this career and you learn how to do things the the right way. You look back and, you know, it's always you always wish you knew. You know? So, hopefully, we're able to pay forward to a little bit a few of you today. There's an easier way. It doesn't need to be like that. You can go.

You can enjoy your time away. You need to. You'll come back, recharge. Hopefully, you got some tips to get prepared for it.

Last question, guys, before we wrap up. Dream vacation destination.

I I think it'd be in some tropical island in the Pacific. Like, for some reason, I have Guam in my head because it's not very well known. You know? I like to fly to the West Coast for a couple days, go to Hawaii for a week, then go to Guam, and then go to Australia. I know that's kind of a piggish vacation, but that's that and I I love to go skiing in Japan and and hang out in Tokyo for a week or so.

Yeah. And then then you might as well check out Tahiti while you're out there.

Yeah. Keep going. We do. Or or, going. Right? Yeah. Yeah. How about you, Melsie?

Yeah. You know, I you know, low Hawaii. Tahiti is an island I I never really been to. I have a a great friend that lives in Australia that, I've been promising, I'm gonna visit since and for fifteen years now. So, you know, probably headed out that way eventually. Just Just longer trip, kids, and, you know, Hawaii is as far as I've made it thus far and distant wise.

Yeah. Yeah. Australia is the if if we're talking dream destination, Australia is the top of my list. No doubt. And same with me, Hawaii is as far as I've made it. So, hashtag goals. Alright? Listen, guys. Hopefully, hopefully, you guys have gotten some takeaways.

You know, we've kinda talked about pre vacation, how to get ready, how to how to check out during vacation, how to come back to your business post vacation. The biggest thing that I hope you get as a takeaway is that it is perfectly okay and normal for you to take a vacation, and you should be doing so. Your business will be better for it. Your family will be better for it. Your mental health will be better for it. So if you're not doing that, please make it a priority. So and if listen. On the flip side, if you've built a system that lets you take these stress free vacations, if you have some tips or tricks that we haven't thought about, we wanna hear about that.

Drop us a message. Hit us up with a comment, and, let us know what works for you. Make sure you hit that like and subscribe button. Leave us that five star review. We appreciate you guys turning into this episode of lend lending leadership with the mortgage pros. For Tom Mills and Dave Holland, I'm Robert Fillyaw. Thanks, everyone.