"Mortgage Success: Endure and Thrive in 2024!"

Dustin Owen joins Geoff to talk about surviving and thriving in a tough 2024 market. The conversation covers Dustin's Blueprint framework for daily LO activity, his 12-Week Challenge system for building an agent referral base, and the mindset shift required to endure a down cycle. Best for LOs who are losing momentum and need a concrete daily structure to rebuild pipeline.

Takeaways you can run this week

• Run the 12-Week Challenge: send 12 outreach messages (email, text, or DM) per day AND make 12 outbound calls per day with the sole goal of scheduling 1 face-to-face agent meeting per day. Do this for 12 weeks, Monday–Friday only. Expect roughly 60 meetings, ~15 productive referral relationships to launch or rebuild your business.
• Use Dustin's 30-10-5-5-3-1 formula: spend 30 minutes daily proactively networking online, aim for 10 meaningful conversations per day (referral partners or active prospects), track face-to-face meetings weekly, networking events monthly, minutes of exercise, and pages of nonfiction read.
• Structure your call list using theme days: assign specific contact groups (e.g., past clients Monday, agent partners Tuesday, leads Wednesday) so you always know who to call — eliminating decision fatigue and analysis paralysis.
• Leave every agent meeting — even bad ones — with 2 referral names. Use these exact scripts: ask a low-performer 'Who's the rising star in your office?' or ask a prickly top producer 'I'm a lot, I get it — who do you think would be a good fit for me?' Then call those referrals and say '[Name] was bragging about you and suggested we meet.'
• When an LO on your team is considering leaving the industry, walk them through this exercise on paper: write down what you did before mortgage, your best income year there, your hours, and your income ceiling — then compare it to your current traction, existing referral network, and unlimited upside in mortgage. For 98 out of 100, the answer is to stay and increase effort.

The playbook

1. Step 1 — Set your daily target: 10 meaningful conversations (referral partners, active leads, or introducers).
2. Step 2 — Assign theme days to your contact categories so your call list is pre-decided each morning.
3. Step 3 — Send 12 outreach messages (email/text/DM) daily to agent prospects.
4. Step 4 — Make 12 outbound calls daily with the goal of booking 1 face-to-face meeting.
5. Step 5 — Attend that 1 meeting per day; always leave with 2 referral names using the scripts above.
6. Step 6 — Spend 30 minutes daily on intentional online networking (LinkedIn outreach, DMs, engagement).
7. Step 7 — Track weekly: face-to-face meetings held, leads generated, exercise minutes, nonfiction pages read.
8. Step 8 — Repeat for 12 weeks straight, weekdays only. Expect ~60 meetings, ~15 strong agent relationships.

Worth quoting

“There's no such thing as a bad realtor meeting — it gives you another at-bat, another rep.”

“You earned every bit of that money. You just earned it in '22, '23, '24.”

Best for

LOs who have stalled in 2024 and need a simple, trackable daily system to rebuild agent relationships and pipeline from scratch.