As you can tell I have been a bit eratic in posting here of late. Let me come clean. I am kind of moving on. Not from Chad! He and I will continue to collaborate on projects. No I am moving onward in my career and expanding my focus to small business at large. Since 2005 I have trained, spoken and consulted to the mortgage industry. From 200o-2005 I had the most profitable years of my life as a Mortgage Broker. I am proud of the people I worked with (for the most part very few scumbags) and proud that my start as a speaker, trainer and soon to be author was in the mortgage lending industry. But I am also proud that my voice is reaching a wider audience and my lifes work will affect small business people both in and out of the real estate industry. So thank you. 

Now you’re in small business, right? So, hopefully I will still be working on things that you are interested in. But let’s be honest, there are only a certain amount of hours in the day that one can blog, and develop content and so on. So I will leave Loan Officer Unleashed in the capable hands of Chad Weber who continues to make success stories out of loan officers. Even in this very market! 

You’re always invited to join the conversation or start one at my blog http://www.SellingItLikeItIs.net and stay tuned for my new show Selling It Like It Is with Stefan Lubinski on the Small Biz America Network http://www.smallbizamerica.com

And I will also (as I suspect Chad will to) be a frequent guest on Chip Cummings latest marketing site, The Underground Marketing Network (for shady guys like us) http://www.undergroundmarketingnetwork.com which is free to join at the basic level. 

My goal is simple: To help small business people get known, liked and trusted, so more people can buy their products. Because as my friend and mentor Jeffrey Gitomer (http://www.buygitomer.com) says “People don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy!” - and he is right!

Thanks for putting up with me here, and I hope you stay in touch!

Not that things were going well or anything, but today the New York Times did a masterful job of taking mortgage brokers to new lows.

Look, I will be the first to tell you that there were a lot of shitty, unscrupulous brokers but I don’t believe that they made up the bulk of the industry.

Furthermore, Brokers are just that BROKERS! They don’t create the exotic and risky mortgage products themselves. Nor do they underwrite the applications. So trying to put much of the blame on the GLOBAL MELTDOWN on the mortgage broker is insane, innacurate and unfair.

I am not trying to participate in the “blame game”, but hell if the New York Times is going to leave readers with the impression that mortgage brokers as a whole are lying, shady scumbags responsible for this collapse, then I must speak up. And so must you too! In fact, if you don’t call your local paper, radio station or any other vehicle for mass media, and SPEAK UP in your market, you will soon find that you HAVE NO MARKET left!

Banks have always tried to figure out how to shed themselves of the broker connundrum. On one hand they want an unlevel playing field (yield spread disclosure), but on the other they recognize that Brokers account for over 60% of residential origination. THIS IS THEIR CHANCE! The banks will use this opportunity to stoke the flames and keep the media talking about the shitty mortgage broker scumbag. Enough of that, and you can say goodbye to the broker business. Leaving you with the great opportunity of working in a cubicle for a big bank or to find a new career. Are you listening? Do something or you will find yourself doing something different for a living.

Here is the shittiest part of it all: The American consumer is the loser here. Gone will be LICENSED professionals SHOPPING COMPETITIVE RATES on their behalf. Instead they will be left with the Bullpen run banking outfits. How do I know they are Bullpens? I TRAINED THEM!!! (Sorry Brokers I was a double agent and trained whoever cut me a check) But I am a solid supporter of the CHECK and BALANCE that Brokers bring to the lending landscape.

Get your independent insurance broker to speak up for you too. Because you can best believe the Insurance companies are watching this closely to see if they can figure out how to get rid of the brokers in their business.

These companies want Brokers out of the way, not because of the added money they have to pay out, rather it is because the BROKER CONTROLS THE CUSTOMER and maintains the loyalty and drives the behavior and THAT is what they want back: Control!

Write the New York Times and tell them that this story stinks and in no way was a balanced piece.

It’s been a while. Not that any of you noticed. Fact is I have been all but ignoring my own blog at http://www.SellingItLikeItis.net (nice back link plug n’est pas?) and my Facebook page as well. Where have I been you ask? (as if you really cared) Well I have become a Twit. I know many of you think I have always been a twit, and you are right, but I mean a ligitimate Twitterer.

I admit it I poo-pood Twitter not that long ago. Dismissed it as yet another Internet rabbit hole down which one could piss hours of productivity. Until I started to notice it everywhere. No longer confined to a small group of nerds primarily in the SF Bay Area, Twitter was everywhere: TV shows, celebrities, speakers, regular joes… So obviously I was missing something.

And then came along Twitter Power, Joel Comm’s latest best seller. Twitter Power does a masterful job of explaining the size of the Twitter-tunity, sorry I couldn’t resist. Opportunity. And it’s big. Twitter Power not only explains in terms regular joes like me can understand, he does a terrific job of helping us understand where Twitter fits in the Social Media landscape, and how that landscape as a whole and specifically with Twitter can be used to grow communities (to whom we can sell to, learn from, and share with).

One of the exercises in the book is a strategy that puts you in front of OTHER Twitterer followers. The idea being that with such a large audience a number of them might be curious as to who you are IF you were mentioned by the Twitterer themselves. 4 hours after reading that, I was in front of 11,000+ people when @EzineArticles answered one of my (thoughtful) questions. Today I hit the mother load. I set as a goal the author Joel Comm himself to recognize me in one of his Tweets. Mission Accomplished! And yes, this resulted in a number of new followers (audience members) with whom I can sell to, learn from and share with.

If you are not already on Twitter. Get there. If you want to learn what to do once you get there? Get Joel Comm’s book Twitter Power. It’s one tenth of what I charge per hour and HE is the expert. So get the book, read it and DO it. But, for those of you who don’t like to read, or want to have a discussion about YOUR specific goals, by all means contact me at stefan@stefanlubinski.com to book an hour.

Do you know the difference between Inbound and Outbound Marketing? Never heard of Inbound Marketing?
Well Mike Volpe, the VP of Marketing for www.Hubspot.com sure does! And I’ll be interviewing him today at 1PM Central.

Want to join in and ask questions of a top industry expert? No problem, click here: http://tinyurl.com/cdd7wn

I hope to “hear ya” on the call!

This is a brief video which tracks the actual eyeball movements of a subject watching an online video. Great insight as to where your most valuable landscape is. Look for the blue mark on the video. It goes little quickly, so you might want to watch it a few times.

video_talkinghead_eyetrack

On the 22nd of Jan I’ll be launching a new live event series for mortgage marketing in 2009, and I promise this will be unlike anything you’ve ever seen! Just take a look at our tag-line. The first event is almost full for Vacaville, CA. But don’t worry, I’ll be coming to a town near you sometime in early 09 to give you the information that NO ONE is talking about. As soon as the tour dates are final, I’ll post the tour schedule.

See you on the road!

Learn and Earn!

I am happy to announce that I am finally walking the talk. Here I am on teleseminars, webinars and seminars teaching real estate professionals about all they need to know about Web 2.0 tools and strategies, and I still had a very much web 1.0 site (www.stefanlubinski/mac).

This weekend I re-launched my home page and launched my own blog Selling It Like It Is so I am no longer telling people “Do as I say, not as I do”. The holiday slow down allows for a little more time to focus on projects like these, that we are always meaning to take care of, but find it tough to carve out the time. What could you be doing during the holiday slow down most of us experience to make your business in 09 better?

I hope you’ll pop by for a visit!

Happy Holidays,

Stefan Lubinski

Learn and Earn!

Sure you troll the net, often looking up silly shit that often sucks up more time than you like to admit, but do you ever go looking for resources that can help you grow?  I’m in the Video Marketing business, so when I have the time, I do a number of different keyword searches to see what’s out there. Today, I caught something in the net that was worth bookmarking.

What I found was a series of great how-to seminars for small business people available in video, on demand and for free. Even if you work for a company, if you are in sales you are a small business person. Think like a business owner. Invest in your own sales business with constant education. NOTHING is more valuable than know how!

Here is the website I found. Bookmark it, and pick out the videos that interest you and SCHEDULE viewing time into your calendar. If you don’t do this step, the likelyhood is the videos will remain a bookmark instead of part of your knowledge.

SMALL BIZ VIDEO SERIES

Remember, the more you LEARN the more you EARN!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Stefan

Listen Up!

This is the third in a 6-part teleseminar series sponsored by www.ThinkBigWorksmall.com and www.loansifter.com. This week FHA Expert and Marketing Author Chip Cummings offers some great tips about marketing in general and some interesting FHA facts. You can listen to the whole call here. At the end Chip mentions a free resource give-away.

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Listen Up!

Our very own Chad Weber was interviewed for the latest in a 6-Part Teleseminar series. Click the play button and get ready to take notes Chad drops more than one nugget YOU WILL WANT TO KNOW!

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