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Show Summary:

Scott Dillingham shares his personal journey and how he achieved his goals. He always had the desire to be his own boss and found that sales jobs were a good fit for him because the more effort he put in, the greater his commission. He started working at a bank and excelled in the mortgage part of the job. However, he faced challenges when he didn't meet the bank's expectations regarding selling other products. He decided to take a mortgage advisor position and it turned out to be a good move for him. He achieved great success and became the second top mortgage advisor in the country.

After reaching his goal, Scott realized that he was unhappy and decided to make a change. He took a six-month break, during which he continued to process existing clients but didn't actively seek new business. He encourages others who are unhappy in their jobs or businesses to take time off to evaluate their situation and think about what they want. Scott took this time to exercise, which helped him clear his mind and reduce stress. He discovered that he didn't hate mortgages themselves but disliked certain aspects of working at the bank, such as frequent policy changes and the lack of technological flexibility.

During his break, Scott reflected on what he loved about his previous work and what he disliked. He found that he enjoyed helping clients with their mortgages and receiving positive feedback. He realized that it was working for the bank that made him unhappy. With a renewed sense of purpose, he decided to start his own mortgage company. He quickly bought a building for his office and visualized his goals, acting as if he had already achieved them. Scott emphasizes the importance of imagining and visualizing where you want to be and what you want to achieve, as it can help manifest those desires into reality.

Scott Dillingham: Welcome to today's show. I'm really excited to go over today's topic with you because it's very dear to me, and I want to show you how you can get anything you want out of life with a little bit of time and determination. So I'm gonna show you a exactly what I did to get what I wanted and accomplish my dreams.

But I'll take you back to the very first episode that I did, and if you haven't listened to it, I've always wanted to be my own boss. So because I've had that desire to be my own boss, I would always kind of look for sales jobs. And the thing with a sales job is it's one of those things where if you put in some time and effort, your return and the sense of commission will be greater, right?

So the more you put in, the more you can get out. So I've always loved sales and I've always been taught at whatever sales company and sales job that I did. So my last full-time job was at a bank, and I started at the bank as like a financial services representative. We would open bank accounts, sell the client GICs mutual funds.

We could activate credit cards, do loans, mortgages, that type of thing. And at first it was really good and I liked it and I, I actually discovered really quickly, ironically, is I love doing the mortgage part. So I loved the mortgages. What ended up happening though, is I became number one on the team for mortgages, but I wasn't opening up.

The checking and savings accounts and those other things that the bank wants you to sell. Because I wasn't doing that. They actually were putting me on a personal improvement plan, or they were about to, we didn't officially get on the plan, but they were about to because they wanted me to sell more checking and savings accounts.

And with the personal improvement plan, how it works at the bank is they give you an opportunity to improve the metrics that they're looking for. If you can improve, then you have your job. If you cannot improve, there's a slight chance you might get a position somewhere else doing something easier. But more than likely, what happens is you get terminated.

So the way I looked at it was like, wow, they're gonna get rid of me, their top mortgage rep, because I'm not opening checking accounts. It literally did not make any sense to me. But it was okay because they actually had a mortgage advisor position where you're only doing mortgages, and that came up and it was available, so I took it right away to get out of there.

Now the thing with the Mortgage Advisor role, it was commission only. So I was a bit concerned to, to take that, having it be my first commission only role. Very quickly. First year, I doubled my income of what it would've been as a financial services rep. And then each year after that my income went up and up.

I realized I made the right choice. So my last full year at the bank, I finished number two in the country. The guy that beat me he's in Vancouver. His mortgages are like five times the size of mine, whereas I did more mortgages than he did, but he did larger ones and the banks metrics, they rated you based on your volume and also your units.

But volume had a more a weighted score if you have more volume. So the bigger the mortgage, the better your score. So I set a goal. So this is the very first time that I realized. Setting just one goal is not good. Now, for me, in this scenario, I'm gonna go into it. It was good that I created only one goal for myself, but for somebody getting started or just anybody looking to achieve success in their life, you never wanna set just one goal.

You want set multiple goals, like milestones, but keep the goals going indefinitely. As soon as I reached my goal, again, my goal was number one, I was number two. I still felt like I hit my goal. So right away something in my head changed and I was like, I don't like what I'm doing. Yes, I got there. I accomplished my goal, but I don't like what I'm doing.

It makes me unhappy. So then I started to change. So I went through. I would say a transformation period of about six months. It took me to determine what it is that I wanted, but that six month break, normally I was still doing mortgages during that six months, so I wasn't having a break from it. I just, I wasn't getting out there to get new business.

I was just processing my past clients and referrals that were coming in. So I didn't get to take that break, but I encourage anybody who's doing something at a job or a business that you're not enjoying doing or that thought has crossed your mind that you just, you don't like it. You want something better for yourself, better for your life and your family.

I encourage you to take a month to two off work, unpaid leave, whatever you need to just take the month or two off of work. I want you to do what I did, so I'll get it to what I did, and then you'll see quickly how it can help you to achieve your goals, your dreams, and get whatever you want in a life. I reached my goal.

I was topping in the country and I didn't like who I became. I was getting a bit overweight and that's again, it's all my fault, but I was working all day long and even on the weekends I was working all day cuz I had to process. The mortgages had to get everybody's mortgage done. I was so busy actually, that I had to hire a limousine company to drive me around because at the bank you had to meet, this was at the time, but you had to meet every client face-to-face that you worked with.

And my challenge was, is I was working with investors primarily. They're all over Ontario, so even some out of the province that I had to meet too, which is crazy, but. They're all over the place, so I had to literally have someone drive me around so I could work in the back. Like I had my laptop. I was keying in applications, I was talking to clients, answering emails, but my desk was the back of a vehicle because I just couldn't, there's no way for me to sit at my desk.

And to get mortgages done when I still had to go meet them. So I did that. It was probably actually about two years. I had a driver just driving me around just so I could meet and sign the papers with the clients and everything. So that tired me out, right? Cuz I'm always outta town on the road then always sitting down.

Like I said I gained weight. And I became depressed after reaching that goal. I was depressed. I didn't know what I wanted outta my life. Yes, I made better money doing that than anything else in my life, but I was incredibly unhappy and I was willing to throw away all the money for some happiness and relief.

So what I did, and I decided that I wanted to do something different. I needed to get outta mortgages. I took the break. So with the break, I started to run an exercise, which, I think that really helped catapult me into a better position. I'm still not as fit as I want to be, but I'm much fitter than I used to be.

And what happens when you work out, even if it's a little bit, your body releases endorphins, and the endorphins naturally kill cortisol hormone, which is the stress hormone, right? By working out and exercising, you actually are killing your stress and reducing it. So the more you work out in theory, the less stressful and the more happy you will be.

At least that's how I took it. So I was unhappy, wanting to be happy. So working out was one of the first things I did. Plus it naturally helped me to lose weight, which is what I wanted. I was overweight and yeah, so that, that really helped me knowing that I wanted to take a break. Anybody who's listening right now, if you're somewhere in your life and you hate what you're doing, you want change, take one to two months off.

It took me six cuz I was still doing the work that I was doing, but take one to two months off and I'll go into how to decide what to do next. But you need to think about what it was that you disliked about what you did, and you need to think about what you liked about what you did. And we'll dive into that.

As soon as we come back. We have to take a quick pause here, but Ray, when I come back, we'll dive into what the next steps are and what to look forward to. Welcome back. So before the break, I was chatting about taking that break that you need to figure out what you want to do, and I talked about how exercising really helped me to clear my brain, and I encourage everybody to do it when I would go on these runs.

I would think about what I wanted to do and what I did is I would think, what is it that I hated about what I was doing? And I swear to you I thought it was mortgages. I thought I hated doing mortgages that I needed to do like marketing for realtors cuz I have a marketing background and I loved it and I thought maybe I'll do marketing for realtors.

I'll make a lead gen system for them and I'll move forward that way cuz they know all these realtors now. And I just, with the time that I had alone. Even some days I would just sit in a chair and throw in some headphones. Listen to music. It doesn't matter what you're doing, but you need to take time alone and think about what you hated and disliked with your old.

Job or business, whatever it was, and then you need to look at what you loved about it. What were the things that you loved? So for me, I figured out quickly that I loved the fact of helping clients get their home move in. It was so rewarding to speak to a homeowner or an investor who's had a great return from me helping them finance their portfolio and just hearing that positive feedback.

So I knew that's what I loved. But I was stuck. I kept thinking like, I hate mortgages, like I hate it. And so it took me, again, it took me six months, but I came around and I realized I don't actually hate mortgages. I hate doing mortgages for the bank. So it was the bank, which I didn't agree with. They would frequently change their policies, funding policies.

Today, a client would be approved tomorrow. They're not. Now, I realize lenders still do change policies, but I can tell you it's not as frequent as the lender that I was working at. Now I have access to many lenders and there's changes, but usually there changes year by year. Could be maybe six months.

There's some tweaks, right? It's little stuff. This lender, I'm telling you, it was week by week, they were changing things. So I made it very difficult to advise clients and even educate realtors on what was available and what options we could do because they kept changing. So I discovered that I didn't like how they kept changing.

I didn't like how we have technology. We have Zoom, we have all these things that we can do to meet clients electronically. But this lender required me to hire a company. To drive me around and meet everybody cuz I couldn't help where my clients were coming from, referrals happen and it just, I wasn't gonna say no to the business, so I didn't like that they weren't tech savvy and we couldn't meet remotely.

We had to do it face-to-face only. And I do meeting face-to-face, even during covid I, as long as we can practice all the safe measures and stuff, but it's just one of those things that sometimes you can't and you have to do things remotely and use tech and that was not an option. At least at the time when I was there, I heated their policies.

I had two full-time assistants, but they wouldn't allow me to have them do certain tasks that would speed up the process. It's a bank. They're archaic, they're slow. They had their own mindset of what worked and what didn't work. They're not in the field, and I'm sure anybody on this who's listening to the show today can attest to the fact that there are some jobs and some tasks and some policies at where you work.

That do not make any sense, and there's a better way, there's a faster, way more efficient, but it doesn't get implemented. Not always. Sometimes it might get implemented, but they don't get implemented because the boss or the manager or the company says no, they have their own mindset. I decided for me that working for the bank was the worst thing I could do.

So once I figured that out and I realized that I actually do love mortgages, and I'm so serious when I tell you I was depressed. I was not happy. I thought it was mortgages and I had to exit them, but I, it wasn't, I just had to leave the bank. So with that time that I needed, To heal. I got my energy back.

I became fit. I had the my energy back and I knew what I needed to do. I decided that I was starting lend city mortgages. So the first thing that I had to do though was I needed an office and I've been investor, I've been investing for years, so I don't wanna pay somebody else's rent because I'm used to collecting rent.

I bought a building, so within literally one week of. Deciding that I just need to start my own mortgage company and not work for the bank. I already bought a building, so right away offer accepted, ready to go. So there was no hesitation there. I just, I decided and I figured out exactly what I needed to do, and I made it happen.

Another thing that I almost forgot to tell you, but it's super important. Is when you're going through this phase and you have this time and you're trying to imagine the things you didn't like and you do, you need to also imagine where you want to be, what you want to do. Do you want to drive that?

Lamborghini, I, and I know it sounds silly, but imagine yourself just thinking and visualizing yourself driving that Lamborghini. And when you imagine those things for so long, it actually becomes real inside of you, even though you don't have that Lamborghini. It's weird. I'm not a psychologist or anything.

I can't explain why it works, but it does work. When you imagine and already act as if you own something or you are that person you want to be or you have that job that you want to have, you get it. It's crazy how it works, but they spoke about this in the book, think and Grow Rich. So if you're serious about investing in yourself and developing your yourself, get that book, it's great.

But, so I did a lot of that as well. I would imagine where I wanted to be, not so much in my case, it wasn't about buying a car or buying a house or whatever, cuz I had those things. But for me it was like, what can I do that makes me happy? What can I do there? I still want to help people. I love donating and helping in the community.

What can I do where I can do all of those things? And then I was imagining the role, I was imagining owning Land City. I was imagining getting an office that was so amazing that it would look like a Google office or an Apple office right here in Windsor. And if you're ever in the area, if you're at Paulette and Wyandot, drive by, look at our office.

It is amazing. I had the goal and the division that I wanted it to be an office that somebody could walk into and they don't feel nervous. It's relaxing, calming. I didn't want somebody to feel like it's stiff environment. Like when you go into one of those small bank offices and they shut the door and it's just, it's not a very comfortable feeling.

I wanted it to be, you come in, you could relax. We've got couches, we've got lounge areas, we've got a relax room. Like we've got all this stuff just so you can, for your mortgage experience, be in a relaxed state of mind cuz it's, you're buying the biggest. Purchase of your life, right? So you want your trip.

Be relaxed when you do it. Nobody wants to be stressed out when they do this. That was my vision about the property. And it's true. If you come in e even just, I know it sounds crazy, but come in, just come in, take a walk through. My team will give you a tour and just check it out. You don't have to get your mortgage here, but just to see it it's a really cool place.

But again, that was my vision and I made it come true. So the same for you, no matter what you want your vision to be. Think of it, dream it lust over, and then eventually your mind will think you have it. And once that triggers, then you will have it. So it's really cool how this works, but yes, so now. I'm exactly where I vision myself.

I've got the energy. I love what I do. We have fun at work. The team's growing faster than I ever thought possible. Everything is working out exactly how I imagined it working out, and it stemmed from me just taking the time to sit and decide what I do, what I want to do and what I don't want to do. And lastly, before we end this, just about goals really quickly.

So I only set that one goal for myself to be number one in the country. And then when I got it, I felt like there was nothing left for me because I got my goal, I accomplished it. So my goal is similar in the sense that I want to be number one in Canada. So that goal's even bigger now, cuz that's banks and brokers combined.

I want to be number one, but instead of having that just be my one time goal, I want to be number one every single year. So then when I hit it mentally I'm like, okay, this year's great. I got it. Let's move on. Let's get it for next year too. Because if you keep planning in the future and you keep having goals to work towards your energy, it doesn't dry up, especially when it's something that you love.

And taking that hiatus will give you the time that you need to figure out what it is that you love. So I hope this show helps you. Everything that I'm telling you here I've done, I've went through and it's made the world of a difference for me. I wish I took the time off sooner to sit and think about what I wanted to do.

Thanks so much for listening and have a great day.