Sometimes, to expand your opportunities, you have to shrink your strike zone. Evan Swanson, CEO of Swanson Home Loans, talks about this in this episode. Evan delves into the nitty-gritty of the mortgage industry, discussing the importance of developing strong relationships in the industry, and the importance of promoting oneself. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the customer's needs and providing excellent service to ensure repeat business. And that it works better than just focusing on your next script. Evan also shares how starting everything with gratitude can create a powerful and positive mindset for success. Drawing from his vast experience, Evan shares valuable lessons on how to succeed in the mortgage industry, staying ahead of the curve, and the importance of constant learning. Tune in now and learn how to take your mortgage career to the next level.
“Mastering something shrinks your strike zone. It makes you dedicate your life to this part of it, and expands your opportunities.” – Evan Swanson.
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I got a guest that, usually, when I'm with this person, I get so stinking inspired. I am thrilled to be able to share Evan with the world. Evan Swanson, welcome. We are grateful to have you on the show.
Do people in the show world know that your nickname for me is Sensei?
That is my nickname for you. Yes, I do look to you as a sensei.
No. The opposite is true. You're my Sensei.
They don't know that. I haven't made that clear to the audience.
The reason that came up is when we first began doing our work together, which has been so incredibly impactful in my life, I was describing our coaching engagement with my brother-in-law, who has very traditional views on what coaching might mean. I was telling him about all the work we were doing, awareness, mindset, meditation, and all that. He goes, “What is he, your bleeping sensei?” It stuck ever since then. Sensei Steve, thank you.
You're welcome. My favorite part of that whole story was bleeping because I'm guessing he didn't say that. Evan, you have read a few of our episodes. We have a very interesting way of kicking these off. I think it's interesting because I always get some wild responses. In the spirit of a good mindset, because you mentioned that and we want to do that in any possible way, any way that we can throughout the day, the week, and our lives to become people like that.
One way to start anything is to start with gratitude. Since you did not prep for this, and I know because you didn't and you told me, I'd like to know what you're grateful for. Where is gratitude in your life now and for what in your business and your life? Anything, take it wherever you want. What are you grateful for?
First off, I'm looking out the window of my office here in Portland, Oregon. The sun is shining. It's a beautiful Friday afternoon. Friday afternoons are already beautiful. You add sunshine to our winter landscape, and it's stunning. I'm grateful for that. I’ll say that this isn't to be promotional or cheesy or whatever, but I am absolutely honest and sincere when I say this.
I am so grateful for the engagement in the way that you've influenced and impacted my life and my relationships, not only at work. Frankly, you know we spend more time on our coaching calls, sometimes talking about my personal life than we do about my team and origination and all that. I can honestly, genuinely say, and I’ve done plenty of other coaching platforms in my career, I am absolutely grateful for the mindset and the awareness of where I'm at now in my life. Thank you, Sensei.
I'm not going to deflect that because that's not very cool. What I will say is good coaching goes for athletics too. There's no such thing as a good coach without a good athlete, somebody who's willing to put in the work. For people like you, Evan, I’ll give a quick little example of one thing that you wanted to get out was mindset and what you're doing in your world and your life. I told you about a book that I think has become one of the most seminal books to my career and my life, which was Mindsight by Daniel Siegel. You were so interested in that and picked it up.
You were coming into coaching sessions. Not only did you read it, and I never told you this, but you were teaching me stuff. You reinvigorated my passion for the work in how you were taking it on in your own life. I'm grateful for that. Thank you. I'm thankful for the kind of person that you are, that you're this forever learner. I love that about you and what you're doing. Let's dive in.
You and I were having a conversation, and I was triggered to go, “That would be such an amazing episode.” I almost wish I would've hit record. That wouldn't have been cool for you or anything, but where we were going with it, what we were doing and saying, and how you were going about this, I thought that was remarkable and something worthy of a rich conversation.
Before we get into that, it would be fair to let people know if you wouldn't mind. We could have this rich conversation. Maybe there are some people going, “Who are we talking to here? What's happening?” Would you mind giving us a thumbnail sketch of Evan Swanson, who you are, what you do, and why we work together? It could be personal or professional, a little of both but a couple of minutes. Who's Evan Swanson?
I am a person who was born and raised in Portland. It's worth noting I grew up in a real estate family. My mom was a realtor. My aunt was a realtor. My cousin, who's like my older brother, was a realtor in development. All our family gatherings, whether I liked it or appreciated the time or not, would inevitably evolve into some conversation about housing.
I grew up in a real estate family. I was exposed to the concept at a fairly young age, but when I went to college, I wasn't interested in doing real estate, residential sales, or anything like that, but I was drawn to finance and economics, especially economics. I figured I could blend the two through mortgage origination.
I came out of college, traveled around the world once, came back and had student loans coming due and needed a shelter, and took a job in mortgage banking. That was in April of 2002. I’ve been originating residential loans ever since. I’ve been a loan originator and branch manager with Cherry Creek Mortgage out here in Portland. I have had the good fortune to work hard but also get lucky in a lot of ways. I’ve been able to build a nice career and find some purpose in what I do.
Thank you for that. That's a pretty cool thumbnail. You're married, and you got kids. Give us quickly that part of your life.
I’m married. I’ve got a wonderful wife named Tina. We married in 2006, and I’ve got two kids. I have a son and a daughter.
Going back to your career, I’ve met a lot of mortgage people. Clearly, some are interested in finance at higher levels. You have some certifications. You took that pretty seriously. Tell us a little bit about that.
Getting into the mortgage business in 2002, I had a front-row seat to the runup and crash of the housing market. It all starts with the person that was extremely influential in my life, my grandma. In 2009, I was talking to her, and I remember the conversation. I was pointing the finger at all the issues, “Why weren't there regulations around derivatives? Why didn't consumers make better choices around their money? Why was there all this speculation?” I was frustrated for a variety of reasons, but she looked at me and said, “That's fine, but what are you going to do differently moving forward? How are you going to help the solution to the problem as opposed to complaining about it?”
When challenges arise, what are you going to do differently moving forward? Think about how you are going to help the solution to the problem as opposed to complaining about it.
I thought about it and figured the way I could contribute was to bring a level of financial competency into the mortgage origination process. In 2009, I went back to the University of Portland School of Business and got my certificate in Certified Financial Planning. I sat for the exam in 2010 and got my CFP designation in 2010.
I don't manage assets. I don't write fee-only retirement plans. I am a mortgage originator, but where I have created some differentiation is that I wrap my financial planning competency into my engagements with my mortgage customers. It's my belief that you can't make decisions around home purchasing and structuring large sums of debt without taking into consideration the bigger picture. It's my belief that consumers deserve some level of financial competency when going through the origination process. I’ve built my business around that.
For the record, I'm grateful for your grandmother. That's cool to have someone in your life that would challenge you like that in a positive, loving way. That's super cool. Do you think over the years that doing that has made a difference for your business?
I hope so because it was a lot of hard work. It has, for certain. I can speak to that in two ways. First is the impact hopefully it's had on my customers. My hope is that if you ask my customers who engaged me to help them in the home loan process, they would say that they not only got the loan they needed for their housing needs, which is the transaction part of the process, but they also gained a level of understanding, confidence, and clarity that maybe a competitor wouldn't have been able to provide.
That's where the purpose comes from. I can tell you from an operational side, from the side of doing what I do there, I'm going to answer this question by telling a story. You know who Ted Williams is. He is arguably one of the greatest hitters of all time. Ted Williams played the media. What he did is he dragged a couple of reporters off at some point in his career and told them that he has superhuman vision.
The reporters apparently reported on this, and it became this narrative that people had about Ted Williams. The reason was Ted Williams wanted people to understand that, “If I don't swing at a pitch, it's because it's not a strike. Because I have superhuman vision, I know whether the ball's a strike or not.” The umpires heard about this. If they're calling a game and Ted Williams is up to bat and the pitcher throws a marginal pitch right on the edge and Ted Williams doesn't swing, what does the umpire do? He calls it a ball. Ted Williams has superhuman vision, therefore, he must have hit a ball. What Ted Williams is he shrunk the strike zone for himself. Of course, that helped him become an even better hitter.
I don't have superhuman vision or superhuman knowledge, but I will admit that having a CFP designation has lent me some credibility throughout the years with clients. The mortgage process is still complicated. For many people, the idea of a mortgage, amortization, down payments, tax implications, and all these things is overwhelming. Instead of trying to go through the process of educating themselves on all those intricate details, they simply want to align themselves with someone who has that knowledge and credibility. That's all packaged up in a CFP designation.
That CFP designation for me represents the competency, professionalism, and knowledge that I try to convey through our engagement. It's also a symbol to someone who maybe doesn't have a high level of financial sophistication that, hopefully, I'm a person that they can trust. I would never take advantage of that. The honest truth is it has helped me with some clients in terms of credibility.
From time to time, my team will come back when we do the editing for these things. Stephanie and I will come together and try to decide on a title like, “What do we call this title with Evan for our episode?” I’ve never done that. I'm going to tell you the title right now. If she doesn't like it, I don't care. It's Shrink Your Strike Zone.
Is it not going to be Ball Four?
It's not going to be You're Out. How about that? If I'm hearing you and maybe everyone reading this isn't going to go get a CFP, what we can glean from this is wherever you are in whatever career you're in, and we do have a lot of mortgage folks, real estate folks, and many other industries reading this, how do you shrink your strike zone? How do you do that?
If I'm hearing you right to carry out your metaphor by getting this designation caring enough to know and possess that instrumental around a mortgage, you're shrinking your strike zone. Maybe somebody else is going, “I'm going to master reverse mortgages. I'm going to master where interest rates come from.” Master something because it shrinks your strike zone, and you have dedicated your life to this part of it. I think it's fantastic.
I also want to recognize that the reason that I went down this path was not because I was intentionally trying to shrink my strike zone. The reason that I went down this path is because I felt like it was the right thing to do. I felt like there was a need. I felt like consumers deserved higher levels of professionalism and competency in the mortgage industry. That's the reason I did it. The consequence of that has been I have benefited from a strike zone that has been shrunk, and I'm grateful for that.
Sometimes in our episodes, when we're doing these, I partly want to go, “That's enough. Later,” but we haven't even gotten to the meat of what you and I were talking about, although it's linked to it. As you and I were having this discussion, where I thought it got interesting is, in a lot of ways, there are many aspects to business, but you had pointed out and we're talking about the fact that you have dedicated a huge chunk of your vocation to making sure that you guys are operationally excellent.
There's a whole other side of not just your business but every business, which is the promotion of said excellence. We were having this cool dialogue. There are many people out there that maybe don't go get excellent. They just dedicate a ton of energy and effort to the promotional part. They're not that unique. I'm sure they're good people there, but they haven't dug in and made their craft great. They only dedicated energy and effort to making the promotion of their craft great.
There are other people who, like you, dedicate a ton to their craft but still have some questions around, “When we do that, how do we go out to a world that's used to so much marketing and so much promoting and everything on social media, whether it's self-aggrandizing, which some of it's true, and a lot of it is not, how do we take that and communicate that to the world in a meaningful but also proactive way?” What do you think about that? Isn't that the dialogue we were having?
I’ve had a realization, and I’ve been at this for many years. I have been fortunate with great results. I’ve got a great life. Every time that you and I have a coaching call, I go into 1, 2, or 3 days ahead of that. I'm anticipating it. I'm going, “How do I want to spend my time with Sensei? How do I want to benefit from this? How do I want to grow?” New year, new intention, and all those things. Professionally, we're here talking in Q1 of 2023, volumes are down across the board. We all have the desire to boost that and get our production up. I said like, “Yes, I think I'm highly financially competent, especially relative to my competitors.”
As you mentioned, I have a fantastic team. We have gone through the exercise of writing down check listing and scripting virtually all the touchpoints that we have with our consumers so that we can remain highly proactive in communication. We operate at a very high level. It may sound boastful but if you asked my peers and clients, they would say the same thing. Those things are all dialed.
If that's the case, if I have a great operation and I'm highly financially competent, then my next step is to scale that, touch more people, affect more lives, and grow my production. If I'm aware and I'm honest, I’ve always operated from the standpoint, and I'm going to throw another baseball metaphor at you, if you build it, they will come.
I’ve always built my business not spending time thinking about what the next marketing campaign is going to be, what my next script is going to be, or how I manipulate a conversation into converting more leads. It's always been built around how I deliver value and excellent expertise to the consumer and my realtor partners. If I do that enough, then I will have enough business.
Build your business around how you deliver value and excellent expertise to the consumer instead of planning what your next script is going to be.
Fortunately, I have. We are fortunate, but if I want to take it a step further, then I also have to be great at the promotional side. For me, I have narratives in my head about what that looks like. In other words, I’ve always believed that any additional development or time needs to be built around enhancing the expertise and enhancing the operation. I’ve realized lately that those narratives about self-promotion could serve me better.
I'm not going to say have not served me well, but I need to face that. When we started our coaching engagement, and I know this is something that you use with other customers as well, you said, “As you dive into mindset and awareness, if there is not a time in our engagement where you curse me because you are facing something that is so deeply held and so difficult to face, I'm not doing my job.”
Honestly, I think this is it for me. This is a very hard thing, and I'm being vulnerable with everybody on this show. The reality is I have narratives in my head about what a self-promoter looks like. It's the old adage of the used car salesman or the classic salesperson who is out for themselves. I hope people would say I'm anything but that. If I truly want to grow my business moving forward and have everything else built to scale, it's time that I face this.
Thank you for that. How do we face it? What does it mean to face it? We're letting the vulnerable cat out of the bag here. How do we do that?
It might be helpful to share some background. Leading up until now, my business is built primarily by referral, past client, repeat past client referral, realtor referral, and financial planner referral. That has been the overwhelming majority of my business over my career. There are a lot of interactions that I have had throughout my career, especially with real estate professionals that if they got to know me and knew how I operated, could become fantastic sources of business for me and my team. I have not had the courage or I haven't faced this enough to be willing to go out, self-promote, engage that person, and communicate who I am because I feel like I probably have a fear that if I self-promote and proactively engage them, then they're going to perceive me as the classic salesperson.
There's the conundrum. That's the pivotal point.
To your point, if we go to the lizard brain, I’ve never done it. My life is good. People might look at my life and my production and say, “I wouldn't change a thing.” This is a narrative. This is something that I hold and it's something that with your help and support, I'm going to face.
This is all new to me on the show too. I'm grateful for your willingness to be open about this. I’ve had this theory in the past. I'm going to throw the theory out there and bounce it off you. I'm not trying to give people steps, coaching tips, or anything like that, but that's all it is. It’s a theory. We haven't talked about this. Sometimes when I'm working with people around this, I’ll ask people, “Do you ever get that call?”
We used to get a lot more calls at night when we all had home phones and people would call you up and sell something. Now we don't have a lot of home phones, which is funny because they've figured out how to call our cell phones anyway. When you get that call on a cell phone from somebody selling you something and they have what I'm going to call a sales breath, if you get that call on your cell phone, what do you think about that? How do you respond to that?
I try to be courteous because I know that on the other side, it's someone trying to make a living and do their best, but at the same time, I don't give them the time of day. If they keep carrying on, I oftentimes hang up. Your question driving that is, does it change? I don't even have enough engagement with that person to know their name or where they live or anything.
This is why even though we're talking about this, you might be better at this. The fact that you even want to get better and face something that's your own narrative is great. My little take on that is when you said, “I stop and think that's somebody on the other line and they're doing their best or whatever,” that's crucial. I was this guy too, “Don't call me at night.” I would sometimes be rude. Whether I was rude or not outwardly, I was so bugged inwardly.
I learned slowly I could modify my behavior towards that person and not be rude or mean but I still had this inward response, and then I figured something out. The more I did that, the more I built the brick wall of not wanting to be that. What if I had awareness around that and treated those people with respect and whatever? I don't think you need to buy anything. I don't think you need to spend a lot of time with them.
I'm not chastising you. I say the same thing. Talking about car salesman, I'm trying to be aware of that. They're doing a service too. They might not do it right and whatever, but if we can elevate our game in terms of how we think about people in general, I wonder if it lowers our brick wall. I'm making that up, but I'd love to know what you think.
I'm guessing there are other readers on this show who probably deal with the same demons. They have call reluctance or they're worried about hearing no. As you go back to your SCARF acronym, which maybe you'll explain after I do this, to me, it has to do with status. If you ask for something from somebody and they say no, then maybe your status is damaged.
The reality is I logically know that if I took the time to be more self-promoting, if I engaged in more realtor relationships, if I asked for business more often, and by the way, if I have a deep belief that the service I provide is a value, then I have a level of financial competency that I am more equipped to serve my clients than peers I compete against. Why wouldn't I be more willing to go out? Ultimately, I believe I can do more good in the world if I am the one that has the opportunity to help more households. It's that whole adage I always say, “If you name it, you can tame it.” If you slow down enough to logically conclude, then you understand that your mind is not necessarily always serving you best.
This dawned on me. You gave me insight. If I hear what you are saying, and I think I'm hearing you pretty clearly, self-promotion as a concept, do you want to get better at self-promotion? The way you described that, you're actually not promoting yourself. I'm not trying to rewrite the books on how to speak English, but the way you said it, Evan, I'm thinking of service promotion.
That feels a lot better.
Isn't that more accurate? Forget what it feels like. You hit me like, “Yes, maybe we're going to walk away and be better self-promoters.” I'm sitting there going, “No.” Evan's not sitting here saying, “Look how great I am. I'm good.” That's what self-promotion sounds like. What are you actually promoting? Let me ask you, what are you promoting? If you make those calls and reach out to people and whatever, what are you promoting?
I'm promoting the opportunity to deliver a home loan engagement with a very high level of financial competency and professionalism. By the way, we execute pretty well too. I feel confident in that.
Isn't that funny that some people would then take that and culminate it into the concept of you need to get better at self-promotion? It struck me like, “That's part of the problem.” That's completely misnamed. You and I got another name for our thing. Maybe in a day or two, you'll come up with something better because your little tagline of serving people and helping people with financial literacy and a better mortgage, we probably need to make an acronym out of that. Maybe self-promotion's easy to say, but that hit me. You're not self-promoting.
Steve, let me turn the tables. You operate in an industry where there are many coaching companies out there. You take a very unique and effective approach to helping people make changes, achieve growth, achieve goals, better understanding, and more fulfilling life enrichment. I would imagine you have experienced similar tensions. How do you deal with that?
For example, you and I love to play golf. You show up and play in a golf tournament. You get paired with three other golfers you've never met before. Inevitably, at some point in the first few holes, the conversation will arise, “What do you do for a living?” Do you have the same fear of coming across as a self-promoting professional coach, as I do being a self-promoting mortgage professional? Even though deep down, anyone who knows you genuinely knows who you are and what you're all about. It's extremely empowering and beautiful and amazing. However, you can't convey that in a short conversation with someone you're meeting for. How do you deal with that? How do you face that?
I don't want to play this game. I'm the one doing the interviewing over here. It's 100%. Even when you said, “Do I have those same fears?” Isn't it interesting that I wanted to defend myself like, “I don't have fears. I wouldn't call it that,” but the truth is, yes, I do. For me, there is a gap. Even in my industry, what it is that I think is done well in coaching? What there is an expectation out in the world of what it is?
Sometimes, depending on the environment, I ask the question myself. If we're playing golf and I have 27 seconds between shots to tell someone what I do, I know. I guess I go, “I'm a coach.” I’ve observed how people perceive that. What's funny is I’ve always thought that if you're a dentist and you go, “I'm a dentist,” I think people have a pretty clear understanding of what that is.
I bet great dentists, people who take their business seriously and know their craft or whatever, they're not cleaning teeth and stuff. Everybody who masters their craft might struggle with this to some degree because it's the difference between telling a group of people what you think they want to hear and being the unique individual and business that you want to be. If you tell them what they want to hear, like, “Evan, I’ll tell you what I do. I’ll help people make more money. Here are five easy steps to make $1 million. Join. I’ll scream at you, yell at you and tell you what to do,” that's not what I do, but sometimes you can tell that's what people want to hear.
The fear is that's their perception.
It's a narrative. As you said, what's interesting is you and I together don't know what they think. Isn't that funny? We've built a thing that we think they think, so us paying attention to our own narratives on that would make a lot of sense.
That's where I'm at in peeling back the onion. You're right, it's complicated. There are probably a lot of experienced real estate and mortgage professionals that would tune into a show like this. I would invite people who are reading to leave a comment. Raise your hand. Do you deal with this? How does it impact your ability to grow your relationships, cast your net, and help more households? For those of you who are farther along in this journey, what's your mindset? How do you get past some of these tensions that we're talking about?
Goodbye.
Every morning, I'm going to look at the comments of this episode. That's all I'm going to do.
Do you know what's so cool? We got to end because we try to keep our show at a certain length. You and I could go on for a long time. I suspected we might have done this. We weren't trying to create an episode where I bet there are people going, “Are these two kooks going to tell us how to do it?”
We need to get there, yes.
Maybe on another episode. In some ways, we are by at least raising the question, raising the awareness. We have these questions. You asked a couple of brilliant questions there. Maybe less than, “Here are my five steps. Number one, can you be aware of the fact that you, too, have this as a challenge?” and to the degree to which you take that challenge and go, “Here's a way that I do it.”
I heard the way that you're going to do it is you're going to focus on it, you're going to attend to it, and you're going to pay attention to your own narrative around it. We talked about the energy that you're going to have around it. I'm not saying that's the be-all, end-all, but if we leave people with some great questions, that might be enough for now. Maybe later on we'll come back and say, “Here's what we do, but in the meantime, we're going to get to go practice this.”
If you would like, and we don't have to because we could save this for another episode, I'm happy to quickly share the tactical steps that I took away from our coaching call.
You got 120 seconds max to do that.
Here's what I did after our coaching call. I have now reserved time on my schedule weekly to spend time on engagement for expanding referral partner opportunities. As we talked about, I’ve got a goal of creating a distribution list of 500 referral partners that get my monthly little snippet of videos that I send out with knowledge and expertise. That is going to be going through the list of realtors that I currently engage with. We already have them ranked. I'm going to go through my B list, and I'm going to try to create a closer relationship with those people.
Pick up the phone and call them. Engage them. I'm going to go back through all the transactions that our team has closed in the last two years, both buy side and the sell side. I am going to select additional people to add to that communication list. The most important thing is this. When I go into that time block each and every week, I'm going to prepare myself that my mind is going to fight against the activity because I am aware of the fact that this is not something that's habitual in my practice. It's not familiar to me, and my survival mechanism is going to tell me I shouldn't engage in this activity. If you can name it, you can tame it.
As the great Sun Tzu said, “Know thy enemy.” You're calling out the enemy that could come. You know it will come. By doing so, then you don't get your butt kicked by something you didn't want to name or claim. By the way, do you know how people get their butt kicked? Do you know what they do? They go, “I'm too busy.”
That's another episode. That's what we all face as well, for sure.
You made it tangible. It made it to your calendar. You're going to create videos. You're going to do some things. I love the tangibility of that. Yes, we work on mindset and emotions. Those are both below the line. We still need to take action. Otherwise, we walk out doing this high-five chest bump. “I totally agree,” and we don't do anything. The fact that you're going to take those steps is fantastic.
I want to quickly clarify. I already do the video. There are only about 75 people. If I'm already creating an asset that's scalable, why would I limit it to 75? if I believe there's value and expertise, why would I limit it to 75? Why wouldn't I try to spread that out to 500?
If you’re already creating an asset that’s scalable, then why would you limit it? If there’s value and expertise, why wouldn’t you try to spread that out?
That's fantastic. Thank you for your time. I know these go quickly. I have 50 other questions I'd like to get down, but we'll honor people in their time of reading. Evan Swanson, thank you so much for your time. I’m grateful for you and grateful that we were able to do this. Hopefully, in a small way, we helped a lot of people who are in the same boat.
Me too, buddy. Thank you, Sensei.
I will tell you that in every show, it doesn't matter what Evan says or does or what I say or do. What matters is, what did you take away? That's what matters in the show. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you next time here at our show.
Evan was born and raised in Portland in a real estate family. He entered the mortgage industry as a loan officer in 2002 and has had the pleasure of helping over 2,500 households totaling almost $1.0 billion of loan volume over his career. In 2009 Evan received a Financial Planning Certificate from the University of Portland Pamplin School of Business and received his Certified Financial Planning™ Designation in 2010. Evan has a passion for educating clients to understand how their decisions surrounding debt can influence their overall financial well-being. He began investing in real estate for himself in 2003 and advises many investors and real estate professionals on how to build wealth through this proven track.