What's your Peacetime Project?

My top performers are having their best stretch since the market turned.

I’m happy for them.

It’s peacetime, and they earned it.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “yeah, me too!” I have something for you to think about because here is what might be happening instead:

The market got hostile in 2022.

So you changed how you operated, and it worked, and now the results are tempting you to change back.

The point of this newsletter is not to stop you.

It’s to tell you to pause for a second.

Because perhaps your results improved before the market did.

So perhaps the first good month is not yet proof that there will be a second.

But before we go deeper into this and its implications, I think it’s important to define the difference between a peacetime originator and a wartime originator.

Peacetime for an originator is when the market makes enough opportunity on its own. Which is great because during peacetime, any competent producer can focus on capturing and fulfilling it.

Peacetime is great: interest rates (cheap money) make borrowers, volume makes referrals, and all your existing relationships are throwing around more business than you can handle. And when this happens, demand forgives things like inconsistent prospecting. One indicator of peacetime is all the aggressive moves originators make during it. Moves like hiring ahead of volume, building capacity fast, and investing in brand. I am not saying these moves are wrong. For the most part, peacetime is the right time to make them. 2020 and 2021 were peacetime, and taking as much of it as you could was the right call.

Wartime, on the other hand, is when natural demand is not enough, borrowers shop multiple lenders, and agents have fewer deals and fight harder for each one. It’s also where inefficiency starts threatening the economics because now you must create demand instead of waiting for it and create value instead of just delivering it. Not to mention control cost, expect support to produce, and make hard calls before the P&L makes them for you.

The 2022 turn was wartime. And the originators doing well today are the ones who learned to make that switch. It does not mean screaming at people or working every night. The market has not gone back to peacetime. But for the people who adapted, their own businesses have started to feel like it.

I have experienced this first hand:

When my volume disappeared, I realized a good chunk of what I had been calling capacity turned out to be overhead that the volume was hiding.

And that’s the problem I see happening today.

Things are going well now. I’m not scared that that is going to change.

I’m scared we’ll get comfortable.

The difference between peacetime and wartime is not how hard the originator works.

It is which standards stay non-negotiable when the pressure comes off.

Most originators move back and forth between peacetime and wartime mode depending on how the pipeline feels.

Peacetime feels comfortable.

Wartime feels necessary.

And that’s why the ones who stay in wartime longer usually end up with the market share.

Here’s why:

Peacetime Originators relax when the pipeline is full.

Wartime Originators know a full pipeline is last quarter's cashing in and keep prospecting.

Peacetime Originators write detailed marketing plans.

Wartime Originators generate demand while the plan is still in draft.

Peacetime Originators grow with the market.

Wartime Originators grow by taking someone else’s share.

Peacetime Originators have a list of things they mean to get to.

Wartime Originators do the thing they have been putting off for two years, and it takes them two weeks.

Peacetime Originators have fourteen thousand relationships in their database.

Wartime Originators know which forty people are supposed to hear from him this week.

Peacetime Originators outsource their social media because they do not want to be out there.

Wartime Originators own the point of view and hand off the rest.

Peacetime Originators sponsors the golf outing.

Wartime Originators spends the afternoon with the three agents who actually send him loans.

Peacetime Originators takes the app and hands the borrower to his team for good.

Wartime Originators delegate the work but not the relationship, because nobody refers the guy who disappeared after the app.

Peacetime Originators add a second assistant because the first is stuck at fifteen loans a month.

Wartime Originators figure out why a thirty-loan role is producing fifteen before they stack another salary on the problem.

Peacetime Originators are proud they personally saved the file.

Wartime Originators treat the fourth rescue as proof the workflow is broken and fix it so there is no fifth.

Peacetime Originators think the standard is what he said in the meeting.

Wartime Originators know it is what happens the next time someone misses it.

Peacetime Originators lower the standard to protect morale.

Wartime Originators know their best people are watching what they tolerate.

Peacetime Originators call an unproductive role loyalty.

Wartime Originators know one avoided conversation can become another salary.

Peacetime Originators know his rank and his volume to the dollar and his cost per loan not at all.

Wartime Originators know his cost per loan to the dollar and cannot remember his rank.

Peacetime Originators check their numbers when something already feels wrong.

Wartime Originators have a scorecard that tells them something is wrong before they feel it.

Peacetime Originators keep their goals in their head.

Wartime Originators put the number on paper where somebody else can see it.

Peacetime Originators upgrade their life the month after a good month.

Wartime Originators wait for two good quarters and then upgrade one thing.

Peacetime Originators treat a great year as a raise.

Wartime Originators treat it as a reserve.

Peacetime Originators turn a million-dollar year into a million-dollar life.

Wartime Originators use it so a four-hundred-thousand-dollar year does not change their life.

Yes, but most originators switch too late because fear finally pushes them into wartime after the pipeline collapses, and success pulls them back into peacetime before the market warrants it.

Of course, not every wartime behavior should last forever. But demand generation, cost control, clear standards, and financial reserves should remain after the fear is gone.

But the truth is, I don’t know why I am telling you any of this.

Most of you will read it, agree with it, and do nothing.

Peacetime is not a mistake people make. It is a drug. And after two hard years, relief feels earned, and nobody argues with relief.

So I am not going to tell you to operate like you are at war permanently. Because you cannot. You will burn out, and the people around you will stop listening long before that happens anyway. Wartime is a response to conditions. It is not a personality.

But there is an alternative.

Instead of being at war or at peace, you can decide to be unleashed.

Once unleashed, you can decide, in advance, which conditions put you back in it.

And the work of an unleashed originator at peacetime is building the thing that tells you peacetime is over.

UNLEASHED THINKING: The unleashed originator gives themselves a peacetime project

Pick some numbers that matter.

For most originators, it comes down to two. Prospecting discipline and cost discipline, and cost discipline runs personally and professionally. Those are the two that slip because you stop prospecting at the level that filled the pipeline, and the expenses get bloated at the office and at home. Neither one announces itself, but both creep, and then reality forces the conversation on you.

So write down where you operate.

Volume, pull-through, cost per loan, conversations per week, months of reserves, whatever you have decided is actually non-negotiable. Then set the line. If you fall outside it, you are in wartime. Not when the market turns. When you fall outside the line.

I did not trust myself either. So I built my own version of this over the last year.

Non-sales cost per funded loan now goes in front of everybody, every month. Six thousand dollars, then forty-six hundred, then thirty-six hundred, then three thousand. If it starts climbing, I find out early, and I put it on a chart, because numbers buried in a spreadsheet stay buried and nobody volunteers to bring them up.

Then I took it to the person level and converted the ops team to cost per funded loan. And when I did that, the conversation changed that week. It had been We need to hire another processor. Now it was all about what these roles actually cost. Nobody had to win an argument. The number did it.

Today, my top Unleashed Originators run a monthly scorecard on the activity that produces next quarter. I introduced it years ago and my best people still use it. But the tracking is not the point. The point is that a month of not doing what you said you would do is a signal of some possible signs of war.

But even if it’s not, just building something like the above during peacetime is worth something. It keeps you ready, nimble, and in the right frame of mind. Peacetime is dangerous partly because it is empty. But an unleashed project with a standard you can actually miss gives you something to push against. Your own inner war, so to speak.

As the saying goes, the hardest person to conquer is yourself.

Unleashed originators deal with their problems before they are forced to.

You already proved you can operate in wartime.

And the results happening today are real. But the market has not improved enough to justify giving back the disciplines that produced those results.

So do not just nod along with peacetime.

Unleash yourself from the dichotomy altogether and circle the first contrast you wanted to argue with.

Even if it’s something in this newsletter.

Hit reply.

I read everyone

Rich Weidel
CEO, Princeton Mortgage