Lessons in Leadership and Growth from the Top 1%

Terri Santiago-Parker breaks down how she built a team that lets her close 35 loans a month while reclaiming her personal life — covering team structure, a structured weekly call cadence for agents, past-client gifting systems, and leadership habits like never complaining to your team. Best for LOs who are stuck in the weeds of their own pipeline and want a replicable system for both agent outreach and team culture.

Takeaways you can run this week

• Run a 'Perfect Work Week' call cadence: Monday = 40 agents (10 existing partners, 10 listing agents from deals closed in last 90 days, 10 whale targets, 10 agents from the same brokerage as a current partner); Tuesday = pipeline updates; Wednesday = re-contact unconverted leads from the past 60 days; Thursday = VIP past-client touches tied to upcoming holidays; Friday = call active pre-approvals because buyers shop on weekends.
• Before Monday agent calls, have an assistant pull one personal commonality per agent (gym, local magazine ad, neighborhood overlap) so your opener is a genuine question — e.g., 'I saw you advertise in Clipper magazine — what's your ROI? I'm thinking about doing it too.' Never mention loans on the first call.
• Set up a 'Mortgage Monday Form' for every team member: log who they called, what they discussed, and one fun fact. Use the fun fact as the opener the following week so agents feel remembered — 'Hey, how did that gym thing go?' — without you actually having to memorize it.
• Read 'The Connector's Way' and identify one task you are personally bottlenecking. Hire or assign a 'team captain' to own that function completely, then protect your time for outreach and relationship-building only.
• Mail a handwritten thank-you card with a $25–$50 gift card to three team members per quarter — sent to their home address, not their desk — so a spouse or partner sees it. The goal is that person telling their family 'I have the best job ever,' which generates organic referrals from the employee's household.
• Post a 'Product of the Week' video every Monday on Facebook and Instagram. Terri attributes ~18% of funded loans to social media presence from this consistent weekly habit alone — that's 52 touchpoints per year to your entire sphere.

The playbook

1. Step 1 — Segment your 40 Monday agent calls into four groups of 10: existing partners, listing agents from last 90 days of closed deals, whale targets (15–18+ transactions/year per CoreLogic), and agents in the same brokerage as a current partner.
2. Step 2 — Before each call, research one non-mortgage commonality (neighborhood, marketing channel, social post) to use as the opener.
3. Step 3 — Make calls away from your computer — no email, no texts — using a dedicated call form that captures name, talking points, and one fun fact.
4. Step 4 — At the 2:00 PM daily team meeting, flag any agent who responded well; a senior LO or you personally follows up the next week with a deeper connection or Zoom/coffee invite.
5. Step 5 — Qualify whales via CoreLogic (15–18 transactions/year minimum) before investing in a one-on-one meeting.
6. Step 6 — For past clients (44% of Terri's volume), run quarterly gifting campaigns — seasonal/themed items (e.g., a skeleton with your face cut out at Halloween) with a note card, distributed by team members on their way home to reduce your time cost.

Worth quoting

“The person with the most friends wins — if they just happen to be agents, good for you.”

“I do gifting quarterly — I got these little skeletons from Amazon, put my face on them, sent them with candy: 'Don't be scared to call me and review your mortgage.'”

Best for

LOs doing 10–20 loans/month who are still trapped in their own pipeline and need a structured weekly system for both agent prospecting and past-client retention.

Links from the show notes

• Tap Here
• Facebook
• Check Out myAgent Classes