From Panic to Poise: Transforming Obstacles into Opportunities

Overcoming Obstacles in Business

Speaker 1 0:11

Hey guys , welcome back to the Secret Sauce . I am Lacey Morse and this is Chad Therese , and today we are going to be talking about overcoming obstacles , not objections . Obstacles , obstacles .

Speaker 2 0:22

Like when something goes wrong .

Speaker 1 0:23

Yes , problems .

Speaker 2 0:24

Yeah , problems arise . How do you deal with it ? How do you turn it into ideally ? How do you turn it into a win ?

Speaker 1 0:30

absolutely . This is such a um good one , guys , and the reason I'll tell you this is because , well , you've done loans as long as I have right , 22 years 22 yeah .

Speaker 1 0:41

So I get calls all the time from other real estate agents , title companies that tell me when somebody's handled a problem wrong . And you know , I think back to all the beginning years and all the times that I might have screwed something up or not handled things correctly . So I would have loved to potentially have heard this like the things that we're going to go over way earlier in my career well , just to be fair , most people don't tell the person that screwed up what they did wrong .

Speaker 2 1:10

They go tell somebody else and then that relationship is severed and you didn't even realize it because you didn't get a chance to fix it . Maybe , yeah , so if we can come up with some ways for people to avoid making those mistakes , absolutely because every relationship counts right now . So not killing relationships because of the way you handled adversity . I think is .

Speaker 1 1:30

Well , not just how you handled it . Like you and I were talking to you on how great you know , once you start working on this and mastering it , not only do you handle it , but you can turn it into some pretty incredible opportunities .

Speaker 2 1:42

Totally .

Speaker 1 1:43

And looking for how to do that . So not looking at problems as just that , as problems , but how do I solve and overcome these and turn them into some sort of an opportunity ? Cool , so let's get started .

Speaker 2 1:54

So should we ? I think we should start , and this is your idea and I think it's awesome . I think we should start with what not to do first , and then we'll get into what to do .

Speaker 1 2:03

Well , I'm sure we can all think of the all of the phone calls or all of the things Um . So let's just talk about like a specific scenario , right , like um , and , and obviously what we do is is on the mortgage side , but let's say some problem happened and we're not going to make closing or it could potentially impact , you know , this closing which doesn't just't just , it's not just a loan , it's the people selling their house and potentially , the house that they're buying and moving trucks and utilities .

Speaker 2 2:32

It's just stress .

Speaker 1 2:32

Time off work .

Speaker 2 2:34

Mostly it adds it's not life or death , it adds a ton of stress .

Speaker 1 2:38

Ton of stress . So what are some things that we should not do ?

Speaker 2 2:42

So I think , first and foremost , don't panic . Like definitely don't bury your head in the sand and ignore it . I've had people do that I'm guilty of . That is like maybe this problem will go away if I just give it some time to go away . Typically , that is not gonna help . So don't bury your head in the sand and ignore the problem .

Speaker 1 3:03

Yeah that's good . And you said don't panic . I love that one because that's sometimes a natural , right response . But I will tell you when you go into any conversation , panic . What does it do to everybody else in the conversation ?

Speaker 2 3:16

Everybody else is panicked . Everybody else is panicked and if you lead a team and you panic , you're like the captain of the ship . So if you're panicking , they're like thinking do I need to jump overboard ?

Speaker 1 3:24

Yep , they're teaching everybody how to respond to this problem .

Speaker 2 3:28

So you need to be the calm .

Speaker 1 3:30

You need to be the calm and you made this really good comment . Like it doesn't mean you can't have a little freak out period , right ?

Speaker 2 3:36

So , like you're talking about time to recovery , I think because I did a video about this a couple weeks ago and I just think it's super important Like , yes , you , if you have something go wrong , there's nothing wrong with freaking out a little bit , give it , but you have to give it a time limit . I love a five minute time limit to yourself or one other person .

Speaker 2 3:54

Sometimes it's good to vent to somebody else , but you don't want to ruin their day by dumping all your shit on them either . So I'd say , you know , five minutes to have a freak out . That's enough time where you're not going to ruin somebody else's day either . After that , beyond that , you're starting to mess up somebody else's day too . So , out of respect for them and respect to yourself and respect for the problem , give it five minutes , freak out , punch a pillow , scream whatever you got to do and then all right . Now it's time to find some solutions .

Speaker 1 4:19

Yep Right , what are the solutions and how do we get there ? I love that . I love that you know , definitely not letting it go away . Don't get defensive , don't start playing the blame game . Those are all things that are not what not to do . You made the comment , too , about not letting it fester . Explain that .

Speaker 2 4:38

I'm trying to think what the context was when I was talking about that , because I know there was a story behind it , but just letting it I think again it's just letting it sit there and continue to build , and now you're freaking out , you can't sleep at night , like you've got to address the problem versus just back to I think the second thing I said , like burying your head in the sand is also letting it fester .

Speaker 2 5:00

So I think those two go hand in hand and I've been guilty of it . I've had people on my team , I've lost relationships because of avoiding it and letting things just continue to fester . And then the stress gets super high . And then , even if you fix it , you cause so much stress that it doesn't matter that you fix the problem . You let it get to a point that was beyond repairable with the relationship .

Speaker 1 5:22

Yep , we don't want that to happen .

Speaker 2 5:23

So let's talk about what to do , right . Yep , I mean , first and foremost , I think you've got to listen and then own it Right . If this is a problem that you created , your team created , no matter why you're in that situation , you've got to be able to own it and say , okay , hey , here's what's going on . Now we got to start action planning to figure out how we move forward .

Speaker 1 5:46

Absolutely Owning it , addressing it . We've talked about that . I want to kind of tell a little story here . So there was a . This was years and years ago and the reason I want to tell you this is because this is one of my biggest real estate agents that I work with now . But one of of our beginning transactions there was a non-occupying co-borrower , which means a parent was co-signing for their kids and they lived in another state , and what we didn't do is we didn't tell them that they needed to be at closing before you would assume everybody would know .

Speaker 2 6:22

But we can't make the assumptions .

Speaker 1 6:23

Well , there's lots of people who could tell that right , not just us , um , but again that goes back to owning it right like , yes , the agent should could have said that , yes , the title company could have said that . But we made it all the way to pretty much day of closing and realize we have some people who are out of state and this isn't going to happen the way we thought it would . And so she came in my office and was like you know , I first of all . She's like I don't like that . This happened the way it did . And so you know my first reaction is defense and I'm very defensive over my team . I love my team . I think we all have the biggest hearts and really truly care about people's experience and making this a really good process for people and helping them with homeownership . So I get defensive .

Speaker 2 7:05

Which I think any good leader would , in that you want to protect your team . Yeah , so that's human nature .

Speaker 1 7:10

Yeah , got defensive , but it's not necessarily the best reaction . It's not the best and it made me not really listen to her as much , right , because when we get defensive , I'm ready . I want to jump in here . I want to tell the reasons why this happened .

Speaker 2 7:22

Yeah , why didn't you think of it ? Why didn't your title company think of it ? Who else ?

Speaker 1 7:24

could have , you know , and all those things . And so I had to listen , told her you know what . I appreciate the feedback and I'm going to get back to her Because I needed some of that time , like you talked about , to calm down . I also needed the time to own it and research it , like how did it happen ? But then it went in farther into okay , I'm going to address it and then I'm going to adjust the process , you know , and so I got with my team and we talked about the , the impact it had on everybody and all of that . So we own it more . I think , when you know the problems that it created , it's more of a feeling of , okay , why is this so important that we fix it ? Um , and then we went into how can we make sure it doesn't happen again ?

Speaker 2 8:09

create a process , add a step in your process in our checklist .

Speaker 1 8:12

Make sure we put it here .

Speaker 2 8:13

Hey , yeah , absolutely if you got a problem , the biggest thing , like they'd say , like if something bad happens , it could be a win as long as you learn from it and course correct Right . So , like now you've created a new part of your process to make sure that it never happens again , which is for a lot of our processes and a lot of people out there . Their processes are created by things that went wrong , that you're like how do we avoid that pain from that thing again ? And you create a process around it . So just know that , yes , bad things are going to happen , but you can make sure , you can use that as a learning tool to make sure it doesn't happen again . And now you create a system and a process around it , not just hope that doesn't happen again . You're identifying it and you're making sure it doesn't happen .

Speaker 1 8:51

Well , this is where we turn that piece in the opportunity right . So we want to turn it into how do we make this an opportunity ? And so I still go back to that story . I I invited the realtor back for her and I to have a chat hey , will you come back and talk with me about this ? And when we did , I said you know , first I want to let you know .

Speaker 1 9:09

I'm sorry I got defensive , it's just who I am and it's what I do , but really , once I had a time to calm down and really look at the whole thing you're 100% right like we should have been the one we are the leaders here , we are the experts here . We should have been the one initiating that everybody's on the same page with this and not relying for other people to do it . And so then I showed her where we put it in our system , where we actually fixed it in our checklist , not just saying we didn't , but boom , showing her where it was at in the checklist . And after that meeting I'll tell you she wrote me this card , and in this card she just said I just want you to know it was one of the best meetings ever that you took the problem . You fix the problem . You made sure the problem is not going to happen again and we talked about it .

Speaker 2 9:56

And it was so good .

Speaker 1 9:57

It was so good and it was such a big aha and learning opportunity for me and , like I said , I do a ton of business with her now . We are super close , like super , super close now . But what I've learned too in all of it is you know , realtors , lenders we all sometimes want to hide from the problem , bury our head in the sand , act like it didn't happen . But collaboratively we can come up with a lot of good solutions if we do it together . And so for me , I just think it's so important , if we identify a problem early on , to let's take it on headfirst and let's figure out how to fix it soon . And I don't have a problem calling a real estate agent into this and say , hey , we have a hurdle and I want your expertise and I want you to help me through this , because they may know something that I don't know , and vice versa . We are all with clients at different times in this process and we know things , and so when we can do that collaboratively , we can fix things so much faster .

Speaker 2 10:56

So good , so good , and I would encourage everybody to rewind that , probably , and listen to that last two , three minutes , because there's a lot of nuggets in there

Elevating Your Problem-Solving Authority

Speaker 2 11:05

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Speaker 2 11:05

What I heard you say that I love is you know that you took that on and instead of letting the realtor drive the situation , you put yourself in a position of authority and saying like I'm going to fix this because realtors feel like they need to do that , they need to be everything to everyone , and then we become just an order taker as a loan officer .

Speaker 2 11:25

So loan officers out there listening , if you're looking for a reason to put yourself on even playing field , or even maybe sometimes like hey , I'm an expert even more at this thing , then Realtors really look at you different than just an order taker or just a commodity or who's got the best rate . You're like , okay , this person is an amazing problem solver and now I can go to them as this authority figure . So you put yourself in that authority place instead of like , okay , what can I do to fix it ? And now they're leading the situation Like you took the bull by the horns , you made it work and now you've just elevated in their mind . You elevated your position , and I think that is huge .

Speaker 1 12:01

It is good and I'll tell you , for the majority of people they want to help , like you know I mean they want to be involved . If there is that , I think if we pulled you know hundred agents and said , would you rather be completely left out or would you want to be brought in if needed ? But I'm not gonna like little little bumps and stuff that there's no need for that . We can fix those things , but when there is a big problem , would you rather be pulled in to help collaborate and come up with a solution ? Like I think we wouldn't even have to ask that , you know I mean everybody would want to have their hands in on that , if we knew it was going to stop the moving truck .

Speaker 1 12:36

You know , and that's what we focus on is nothing can stop the moving truck , and so I just think that's where the opportunity comes . And if we learn that when there are problems I love problems because there's going to be somewhere to find the opportunity after it and I've only done that from , you know , crashing and burning myself and learning the hard way . Learning the hard way .

Speaker 2 12:56

It's going to happen and I think that makes a good point , just that it's going to happen . We've got to be better Everybody's got to be better about letting people know that this is not going to be 100% smooth sailing from the get-go . So you use the plane analogy like we're going to hit turbulence , but my job is to make sure that we land the plane safely . So I think if we don't preempt the whole transaction , the whole process , we don't tell people ahead of time there's going to be turbulence , that as soon as there's some turbulence , everybody freaks the out pardon my french uh , but they do and and so , and now you're having to try to recover from that , instead of just , hey , there's going to be some turbulence , and then when that happens , they're like all right , lacy said this was going to happen , but she also said she was going to land the plane . So , like having faith in what you already told them ahead of time what's going to happen , uh , if you can just proactively have that conversation ahead of time that there is a good chance that something's going to wrong , they go wrong , people won't freak out so much . So how do we wrap this up ? I think there was one last thing that I think is super important , that a lot of people miss the boat on , and that is after you fix the problem .

Speaker 2 14:06

A lot of people don't tell the story . They leave it there , and I have written this up uh , this is like one of my mantras for this year . I've written it up on a whiteboard that I see every day when I come in the office and , again , pardon my french , but it says tell the story . We have to be better at telling the freaking story . Okay , and we all need to get better at this . Uh is , when we solve a problem , when we figure something out , we can't keep it to ourselves . That is what we need to , like get , whether it's social media , celebrate it with your team , uh , but definitely get out there and tell that story . Have them tell the story , like hey , can I get a testimonial from you ? And have them talk about that's their story , the turbulence they hit , how you landed that plane . We don't capitalize on that enough , because our job is to fix problems as they come up and we just take it for granted Like oh , yeah , we did it , we fixed another problem , great , but nobody knows .

Speaker 2 15:00

So we've got to tell people , use that as a possibility . Like every problem is a possibility to tell an amazing story .

Speaker 1 15:06

An opportunity . I love it . Yeah , I think that if we miss that part , it's so important because nobody knows you're an excellent problem solver unless they know you're an excellent problem solver .

Speaker 2 15:16

We just think everybody is like , oh , they must've like done all these things . But yeah , I love it . I think in my mind that's probably the best place to leave it . We can leave this one semi short and sweet . Um , if you guys have any questions about that , reach out . But for everybody listening , we just don't say this enough . But if you enjoyed this , if this is something that added value to you , it would mean the world to us if you would share it . Whether you're viewing it on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast site , please just share this with somebody who also could get some value from it . We love doing this and we will be back with another ingredient . Absolutely Thanks , guys . See you next time .