Peace, Love, and Traditional Mortgage Lending

Peace, Love, and Traditional Mortgage Lending was the title for this year's Texas Mortgage Banker's 58th Annual Educational Seminar and Marketplace.

Peace......Love......traditional....mortgage...lending....!

LOL. I'm a product of the 60's and 70's and that brings up some serious contradictions; while some were sitting around peacing and loving with their favorite bong in tow, others were fighting for it (the peace, not the bong nor the love). Overseas and on the campuses across America. Peace and Love......and fighting for it along the way. Ahhhh - the good old days.

But what about "traditional mortgage lending?" What is traditional mortgage lending?

Just because we are back to FNMA, FHLMC, VA, and FHA let's don't fool ourselves into thinking there is anything tradional about our industry. Not with automated underwriting, neighborhood watch, credit scores, mimimum credit scores, Uncle Sam's intervention, fraud detection tools, identify theft prevention, HAWK alerts, pulling transcripts from the IRS during underwriting, AVMs.....

Traditional? Not after 7 years of unchecked greed from Wall Street all the way down to main street, people turning their heads all along the way. The blindness and head-turning taken on by many is like the homeless guy, or the beaten pedestrian that everyone turned their head to ignore.

Tradional? I'm not sure we would know traditional if it bit us in the butt, but we are not back to "tradional" (no offense to TMBA). Traditional to some of us include typed 1003s, carbon paper, and a world without emails. Heck...tradional mortgage lending would have to include a time without computers. Now there's an idea - NO EMAILS!!!

If there ever has been a traditional, we have to do much better than traditional. We have to rise way above TRADIONAL. Here in Austin there's an old saying..."Onward through the Fog."

Let's break from the fog. Let's rise above the clouds hovering around us and get a clear vision of where we are going and how we're going to get there.

Peace and Love? Ok, but let's get our heads out of..the sand, and fight for it - that's traditional.

Yesterday's 1006 meeting was great. It was great because I continued to hear about successes around the office and out in the field.

We gave out three Real Sales awards; Erin Scott, Kristi Barcuch, and Kristin Clardy. The ECS' poured in this week and I thank everyone for their hard-work and dedication to making Alethes a better company.

I'd also like to welcome aboard Lee Buckner as a new Account Rep in the Dallas area. Also, thanks to John Bentham for the extra work he is putting into the Account Rep program.

To wrap up this week, I'll summarize some of the things we are doing on a daily basis to focus on making Alethes the best-in-the-business:

**Daily Round-Table BYOL (bring-your-own-lunch) in the conference room. While some days have a specific agenda, most days it is just a time to get together and review processes and clients.

**Every day we have an Underwriting meeting at the end of the day. This keeps us all in the same mind-set and we learn from each other. Processing staff are also invited into these meetings to insure we are all clear on our goals and understandings. Normal participants are Ruth, Kelley, Kathy N, Paul, Carrie, and myself with Mark and others from processing and closing attending from time-to-time.

**Closing check-in meetings; while this meeting has been hit and miss, this group is highly engaged with each other through-out the day. This meeting includes Mary, Carmen, Gina, Kristi, Angie, and Curtis.

**Closing BYOL on Tuesdays

**Sales strategy meetings/data-mining; this meeting varies, but at least 3 times a week if not daily some of us meet for 1-3 hours. We discuss various "active" accounts and then work through lists of loan officers and review needs and what we can do to help them achieve their goals, which in turn helps us. We review our CRM on a continuous basis. We've added three new Account Reps in the past 3 weeks to help work the accounts. This meeting regularly includes Paul, Christy, Austen, John Bentham, myself and others such as Mark Kelly, John Glenn attend from time-to-time. (special thanks to Mark Kelly for his input into this meeting. His insights are very valuable)

**Processing Check-In meetings everyday at 9am

**I also have a daily check-in meeting with my direct reports. We try to keep this to a 7-10 minute stand-up meeting and hit on highlights. From that meeting we can then set other meetings with each other and/or departments for longer set-downs.

**1006 Meeting on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 10:06am. This is meant to be a quick round-robin check-in style meeting with announcements, reminders, and tips. We'll continue to work at ways to make this meeting more impactful and meaningful. This is an "open meeting" to all employees and approved third-party brokers. You can contact Christy Meaux at christy.meaux@alethes.biz for the conference call number.

This is just a summary of just some of what we are focusing on, but please know that we aren't setting on our hands and tongues waiting for the markets to turn and times to get better.

Alethes is, in part, about purpose and persistance.

"Every individual and every company falls from time-to-time. The measure of an individual, and a company, is how many times they've fallen. The good measure is not how many times they've fallen, but how many times they've gotten back up. The GREAT measure is not how many times they've fallen and risen, but how many times the individuals rise together, as a company, brush off the dirt from themselves and each other, and strive together towards a common goal."

That's the Alethes I know and love.

God Bless,

Danny

It makes the Long Haul smoother

As I mentioned two weeks ago, my focus is on the long haul; Best Practices.

It's been great to watch those who've risen to the occasion over the past month in Alethes Wholesale. We've had more new business in the past month than we've had in the past 6 months.

We've had more people engaged in the business of doing what it takes than ever before. Gail Petty and Kathy Nguyen have both received Real Sales awards. Angie has crossed departmental lines to insure our shipping turn-times have stayed true. Roy Whitlock has been giving me more numbers and data, and with a smile, than I could handle (almost). Christy Meaux has been data mining our CRM as if there was gold hidden deep inside! Thanks Christy for feeding the Dialing for Dollars Sales Team with fresh leads. Oh, and I love those reports!

Jason and Curtis have had one afternoon in the past 2 weeks where they had 29 locks - now that was exciting! And Scott - what a programming fool he's become! In addition to the new web site (thanks Scott, Ben, and Jeremy) we've have a new "intra-net" that gives us all sorts of data and numbers at a glance.

Erin has been working AUS files like she was a mad-woman. Erin's also been part of the Dialing for Dollars Sales Team that's included John Bentham, Christy Meaux, Mary Reynolds, Austen Smith, Paul Findley, Chris Margiotta, Joe McCubbin, and Brad Burnie.


Thanks for Best Practices everyone.