Ep 156: The Strategy of Preeminence to Gain Trust, Relevancy and Ignite Your Business

Geoff interviews legendary business consultant Jay Abraham on the Strategy of Preeminence — how mortgage professionals can rise above commodity status by shifting from tactical thinking to strategic thinking, and from chasing customers to serving clients. Best for LOs who feel stuck doing the same things and getting the same results.

Takeaways you can run this week

• Audit your entire client experience from first moment of awareness through closing and ask: at each touchpoint, am I acting as a commodity provider or a trusted advisor under whose protection this person sits?
• Each week, identify 5-10 local entrepreneurs (restaurant owners, hair salon owners, etc.) and contribute one concrete business-growth idea, referral, or resource to each — with no immediate ask. Over a year, you can build 500+ influential advocates who feel ethically obligated to reciprocate.
• Count your formalized, systematized referral-generating processes right now. If you have zero or one, add a second this month. Jay's point: if 50-100% of your business comes from referrals but you have no referral system, a single added process compounding over time is more valuable than any ad spend.
• Stop asking 'What do I have to say to get people to buy?' and reframe every client interaction around 'What problem can I solve or what opportunity can I make possible for this specific person right now?'
• Before your next agent or client meeting, write down what their hopes, fears, and goals are beyond the transaction — their retirement, their kids, their business — and open the conversation there instead of leading with rates or products.
• Replace the word 'customer' with 'client' in all your marketing copy, scripts, and internal language — then audit whether your actual process matches that promise of protection and advocacy.

The playbook

1. 1. Define your master long-term game plan (not just a revenue goal) — what kind of business and reputation are you building in 3-5 years?
2. 2. Identify which gradients of greatness (advisor, communicator, trusted partner) you want to develop; find 2-3 real people you observe and admire in each area.
3. 3. Isolate the specific attributes those people demonstrate — how they listen, acknowledge, communicate — and determine which you can authentically adopt.
4. 4. Layer one new attribute or behavior at a time; allow yourself to become comfortable before adding the next (bulletproof jacket model: crisscross layers, not a single plate).
5. 5. Audit all referral sources and build at least one new systematic referral-generating process per quarter.
6. 6. Weekly: contribute value to 5-10 local business owners with no immediate ask, building relational capital over time.

Worth quoting

“You can be the best intended, the best educated, the most knowledgeable, but if you can't express that to the market in a powerfully distinctive way, you're not going to get rewarded.”

“If you refer to people you do business with as customers, you're saying between the lines: I am a commodity.”

Best for

LOs who are busy and technically competent but feel indistinguishable from competitors and have no systematic referral process in place.