In this episode of Lykken on Lending, David Lykken sits down with Cindy Ertman, CEO of The Defining Difference, to unpack how top mortgage professionals build practical, repeatable systems that drive real results—without the overwhelm. Cindy shares hard-earned insights from her journey as a billion-dollar producer, branch builder, and elite coach, breaking down why systems aren’t about rigidity—they’re about freedom, consistency, and scalability. From referral partner follow-up and client journey mapping to marketing calendars and team leverage, this conversation is packed with actionable ideas that help originators grow production and reclaim quality of life. If you love the idea of working smarter, not harder, this episode is a must-listen.
[David] Listeners, I always say this, but we’re in for another really big treat. We have Cindy Ertman joining us today. Cindy is just one of those people that when she enters the room. She just fills the room up. She’s bigger than life. She’s got a smile that just turns on lights everywhere. Everyone lights up when they see sin because she’s just that kind of person inviting type personality. We’re gonna be talking today about building practical systems that drive results without being overwhelmed. I gotta tell you, I love systems and I’m a systems. But I don’t always like to follow ’em. I like setting ’em up, but I don’t like to follow ’em. That’s why I have Ben and Cherry who helped me on my system. But we’re gonna find out the secrets. What’s working. Cindy is the CEO of The Defining Difference. I love that because each of us have a defining difference and we’re gonna interested in getting insights into Cindy’s defining difference and how she helps you find your defining difference. So Cindy, welcome to the podcast.
[Cindy] Oh my gosh, I’m so happy to be here. David, thank you so much for having me. This is gonna be fun.
[David] Big shout out to Michelle Berman, who, uh, put us together too and I’ve known of you for a long, long time, but Michelle said, Dave, you’ve got to have Cindy on your podcast. And I, I said, I would love to, I love her, her coaching. I love what you do. Give us a little bit of your background. You’ve been, you’ve been named Five Time recipient of the Mortgage Executive Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential Executives. You’ve got lots of creds here. Why don’t you tell your story a little bit and, give our listeners some insights.
[Cindy] Well look, as most of us, we end up in the mortgage industry by accident, right? Yeah. I mean that’s really pretty much everybody’s story. And I just, I think early on, very early in my career, one of my mentors said to me, look, nobody’s gonna make you great. You have to wanna be great. And you know, sometimes you hear those right words at the right time. And for some reason that really resonated with me and I just made a decision. I remember being on the 405 freeway in LA. I live in Manhattan Beach, California. And I remember just thinking, I’m gonna set my intention that I’m gonna be one of the best mortgage originators in America, and I’m gonna do whatever it takes to be great. And I just sat on that path. I just wanted to get better every single day. And I started following top producers. Really didn’t have any female mentors at that time. You know, there weren’t that many females that were killing it in the mortgage industry. And, uh, so I just sat down on this path that I was gonna figure out what the top people were doing and I didn’t have to reinvent success and ultimately ended up building a billion dollar branch with my, my product, my partner. And, you know, my highlight year in terms of my personal production was over 200 million, probably funded nearly 3 billion in loans over the course of my career. And, you know, my partner and I built our region from 1 to 20 branches and. So, I mean, I’ve kind of hit almost all areas of mortgage except the secondary market. Yeah. And I just, you know, I really believe wholeheartedly that to build a successful business you do have to have replicatable systems and Yes. Yes. So I, I just. It got to a place in my career where I was spending so much time, you know, coaching, teaching, training, others. I was on national stages. I was on the faculty of Lone Toolbox for 17 years. That’s right. Coaching, teaching and training there. Well, I think I first met you, ever heard of you is on Loan Toolbox probably so, and then I just finally, this, that little voice inside my head is like. If I don’t do this now, you know, I think I’ll, I’ll live with that regret and I try to live with no regrets. So 13 years ago I launched my coaching and training company and I built it, and fortunately they came. So here we are.
[David] Well, yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about the name, the defining difference. Where did you come up with it? What’s the origin of that? Well, that name was not selected by me. That name was seriously selected by a higher power. I have no idea. I was in the shower one morning and. I’m not kidding. This was 10 years before I launched my company. I had no idea why that name was given to me, downloaded to me. I remember getting outta the shower, writing it down, and I was given instruction to trademark the name and I had no idea why. And of course you can’t trademark a name till it’s in you. So I had to kind of figure out what that was going to be. I started writing a mortgage book actually, and I was, I knew that that wasn’t the path and when I decided to launch my coaching and training company. It just all sort of came together. And then I spent a lot of time, this may sound silly to some, but I did a deep dive on asking myself the question, what is the defining difference really? Like what is it in our life? and I’ve been given this name, the defining difference. And I wanna help people create a defining difference in their life and their business. But what really is it? And one day I have this epiphany that the defining difference is a choice. It’s an intentional choice. And if we don’t like the way our life or our business is going today, we have the ability to make it tomorrow and make new choices. So, the whole crux of my company is helping people make new and intentional choices to elevate their business and their life.
[David] Yeah. I can’t remember which. It was what the Jewish individual, that was Anthony Francos, I think his last name was in a Jewish internment in Auschwitz or something. They killed his parents, killed his wife, killed everything that was important to him, and they had him standing in front of, of, in a naked, in front of a glaring light, and they’re grilling him. And he had an epiphany at that moment. He says they’ve stolen everything near to me and every physical possession. The one thing they, I will not let them steal is my attitude, my define, my outlook. And I’m not gonna let them steal my joy. And so he found a way to find hope and joy in his. It’s a legendary, he lived an old man. He lived inspired many, many people. Through that period and so survived that. And so anyway, it’s a, it’s one of those stories, but, so I think it’s really good to have a defining difference. But one of the things that’s a real har hallmark of yours is systems helping people set up systems and so many people get overwhelmed and even shut down at that because I don’t know about you even, I appreciate systems. I just don’t have sometimes the self-discipline to always wanna follow ’em. I’ve learned to surround myself with people that do, to make sure that I am following the systems, my fiance is helping me. She is, she is really good at that. And that’s, I think that’s one of the reasons I was attracted her because she is really, really good at executing, not necessarily coming up with a system, but helping me execute. So, I wanna hear about your systems and then how do you help people follow their systems and get them set up and then hold ’em accountable.
[Cindy] Well, you know, it’s interesting because I don’t even think I realized till I launched my coaching and training company how many systems I’d actually created as an originator, um, until I started teaching it because I started paying attention that if it was anything that was gonna be replicatable that I was doing over and over again, I just am like, I have to create a system for this. And when I started coaching, I became so aware. The people had no systems for anything. And it’s funny ’cause I almost hate the word because the minute you mention the word systems, people’s like, it’s like looking at your tax return. People’s eyes always over. They don’t wanna, they don’t even wanna talk about it. You know, they don’t even know what I’m talking about when we’re talking about a system and so many people just try to avoid it. One of the things that I love about leading my Mortgage Mastermind Elite group is it’s a group of high level professionals. And then one or two start adopting it and start building out their systems and then they start to see these people’s business take off. Mm-hmm. And become much more, you know, because it levels out your business so you’re not, you know, doing this every month up and down. But, so I started just creating systems for anything that I knew I needed to streamline. And it saves you so much time in the long run. And so, you know, just a few of the systems that I set up was, you know, like a follow-up plan where you go to meet with a realtor. Because I was building my career and I mean, I did a national webinar this last year on creating a realtor follow-up plan because I was talking to very successful originators that were telling me they’d go meet with a new realtor, a high producing team. And one of my clients, very high end guy in Florida, one of my clients said to me in our coaching session, that meeting was two weeks ago when I’ve done nothing to follow up. And so they’re losing opportunities, right? Because they’re not building the relationship ’cause they have no system for follow up. So like to your point, it doesn’t mean that you’re the one that has to execute the whole system. But mapping it out, right? And then figuring out who are gonna be the people that are gonna execute. If you have a loan office or assistant, that’s gonna help you if you have a marketing assistant or if it’s you initially…
[David] Or even new technology. I was interviewing Dan, in fact I’m gonna be interviewing it. He’s with, um, ex total expert. They’ve got a system now where they’re using AI generated voice, interactive voice, and it is so powerful where and one of the statistics he’s came out with is it takes seven follow-ups in order to reach a consumer to get an interaction. Most people quit after two and if they get to three, it’s a miracle, but it’s taking seven. So, it’s having those kind of things that just constantly replicate and do that and that’s what I love about, not only do you talk about the number of times, but you talk about a system. One of the ones that I really like is a marketing calendar. Talk about the marketing calendar. ’cause that is one. That I think we this and, and the sales versus marketing. If you kinda delineate it in your mind what those two are and what’s the importance of a marketing calendar?
[Cindy] I still remember the year I came up with the idea and I had a production partner. You know, we would, you know, if you’re left to your own devices on marketing, everybody knows that marketing is a necessary part to be able to reach a greater audience. Yeah. And so obviously there’s so many different components to marketing, and I did a lot of marketing but…
[David] It’s a top of the sales funnel type activity.
[Cindy] And so one day I called my partner and I said, look, I wanna have a marketing meeting, but what I wanna do this time, instead of just willy-nilly it throughout the year, I wanna sit down and I wanna build out a plan because I had realized systems were a lot of the reason for my success. And so we sat down and I, at that point, it was just a Word doc and I just put January, February, March, April, may, and I just typed up every month and I sat there and we started plugging in what we were gonna do throughout the year. And I had a couple of things that I did. A hundred percent of the time. Consistency is key to all of this. So, one of the things that I did, and \I’m passionate about this today. I talked so much about database management. But I was religious with database management for data.
[David] Data, that’s the key.
[Cindy] And on the first and the 15th of every month, I wrote an email to my past client database and to my realtor partners, and I was able to send that out directly. Many companies today, you can’t do that, but you can send it to your marketing department to make sure it’s compliant and have them send it out, and I highly recommend it. But that was a system that I did. And whether I got info from Barry Habib or I followed six or seven publications, and I would pull updates on the market. I kept my clients updated, so I was in front of them consistently. We did lunch and learns for many years, monthly, and then just as my business exploded, I went to quarterly, but like we would map those out a year in advance. So, we would pick our dates. So, if it was March, let’s say it was March 15th, then on the marketing calendar, I would back it up four weeks and I’d be like, I’d send save the date on February 15th. So that would go into my February calendar and then in January 15th, we always did it two months ahead, we would pick our title. Spent a lot of time on titles, Dave, because I really believe that.
[David] That’s the, that’s the attention getter. Why is that? Yeah. Talk about that. That why that title is so critical.
[Cindy] Well, two things. I always say you gotta have a sexy title ’cause you gotta get people to show up. Yeah. And that’s the key. And the title has to depict exactly what it is they’re teaching so they have some clue what they’re actually attending. So, I spent, and this was before AI in chat, right? So, I would spend hours sometimes coming up with a really great title because you want people to feel like they can’t miss this. This is something exciting to attend. So, but we would come up with the title and the content. Two months ahead, we would send out or save the date a month ahead. And then we had a whole system for how we were gonna get people into the room because. Look, I coach a lot of high performers and the number one reason they don’t do events is ’cause they’re scared to nobody will come. And so we had systems around how to get people into the room. So that would go into the calendar and then three days before we would do a phone campaign, my production partner and I would split the list. We’d call our 30 people. And you know, always, we ended up doing a pretty good job of getting anywhere from 12 to 30 people to show up to our lunch and learns, and we did them live in a person. I mean, I started doing more towards the end a little bit more online. We would do online first time home buyer seminars, which were great, but again, it was all built into the calendar. I still, right up until the end of my production, which was 10 years ago, I was still standing out hard mail postcards every quarter, and my partner would always laugh and she would say, that’s so old school. I said, it’s completely old school, but it works. I got business that almost a hundred percent of the time because I put a lot of thought and time into that postcard. But same thing that postcard had to be. I didn’t have my marketing department design it because I wanted it to be a specific message. I would send them the message, they would put it together, they would run it through compliance. We’d go to print. I got business a hundred percent of the time because people would hang onto it because they’d forget to call me and they’d say, thank you so much for sending this, because it reminded me that I wanted to talk to you. So, and then now we have social media, and so plugging in your social media calendar. I’m redoing mine right now. I had a marketing meeting yesterday with my team from my coaching company. And again, we build out a system for how we’re gonna deliver our social media content. What is our Monday content gonna look like? We have themes around, you know, thought leadership and mortgage tips and then personal stories ’cause people wanna know they want to, those personal stories are so important that they really connect. So again, having systems around it. So plugging in how often, what platforms, how you’re gonna create the content. We have film days, you know, where I set aside two hours or three hours to film content and we batch content because that’s much more efficient for my time. So again, coming up with anything systematized for marketing and it makes it so then you’re looking at a plan. Now you know exactly what you’re gonna do. And then I would give it to my assistant and she would plug it all into the calendar. So, whether you’re using a database management system as your trigger…
[David] You know there, there’s one thing I wanna stop on right there, Cindy. ’cause you didn’t plug it into your calendar, your assistant did. You came up with the plan and then some of the tedious stuff that’s. You get people get bogged down in and get stuck in is not having an assistant. I’ve got two of them and I’ve had as many as five at different times in my career when I’m going blowing and going strong. Trying to slow it down a little bit now. But what happens is that it’s so important to have someone do the things that you’re not good at or that you find distracting or where you get stuck. I wanna emphasize that you had the importance, you saw the importance of having an assistant and you really use and work well with your assistant when, this is a little bit rabbit trail, but how do you find, how do you select an assistant or how do you find someone that’s gonna work well with you?
[Cindy] Well, it’s interesting because I remember being in a place in my mortgage career where I thought I needed a second loan officer assistant. I was just drowning and I was about ready to place an ad for an LOA. When I decided to do, you know, I decided to actually do what I teach. So, I tracked my time for two days on a normal business day, and I tracked it in 15 minute increments. Teach this and it’s a really, it, it changes people’s lives. So I tracked every single thing from the time I got up in the morning to the time I went to bed, how was I spending my time? And it’s really enlightening when you see how you’re actually spending your time. Yeah. And then I put a plus and a minus next to every single activity I did. Did this fuel me or did it deplete me? And then I took everything that depleted me and I put it separately and I looked at it. I’m like, I don’t need a loan officer assistant. I need a personal assistant that’s gonna help manage my life. And it was really revealing to me, and I was running a network group at the time. I put it out to my network group within three days. I hired a 15 hour a week personal slash marketing assistant, and she was an MBA student who just wanted to work a few hours. It changed my life. I’m still friends with her today and I’ve now, I’ve had one full-time for many, many years. But the reality is I really needed someone so that when I was at work, I could focus on work. When I was home, I could focus on my three kids. and it changed everything. That person could help me manage my network group. She was scheduling the lunches, she was sending all the emails, she was helping with my marketing campaign. She was helping, you know, she put everything into my calendar and kept me on track for all my appointments and all my follow up. So, all these systems I created, she could help me keep on track for execution. And some of those systems, you know, were my loan officer assistant that was implementing those for, you know, when we look at creating the ultimate client experience for what happens when a lead comes in the door, and I usually start with my coaching clients there because very few of them have systems created for that client journey. You have a system whether you know it or not, right? Yeah. Whether it’s memorable or not, there is a system. It just may not…
[David] And some systems just don’t work the reality is you should do, like you talked about, the things that gave you life, that gave you fulfillment, those that did not, you eliminated the things that did not, or had someone else do them. And I think it’s really important. One of the things you talk about is mapping out a referral partner, a follow up plan. You talk a lot about the importance of having long-term referral partner relationships, if you explain the concept around, and then how you map out a plan to follow up on them.
[Cindy] Well, look, my passion, if I had to pick one of my superpowers, um, is, you know, referral partner development and relational development, because I studied it. You know, there’s so many different components to being successful in mortgage, but it all boils down to one thing. It’s relationships. Yeah. And so, people don’t study how to build deep and connected relationships, but I built systems around it because it’s not natural for everybody. And so, you know, you can elevate the curve. And my, I became very almost obsessed on there’s gotta be a way to build a real relationship, let’s just call it with a realtor, and really. In a quick order of time. I didn’t want it to take a year for them to see my value, so I had to come up with really strategic ways to intentionally show my value kind of right outta the gate. But one of the ways that I would do that is. I’m gonna back up a little bit and when I’d get the meeting, because it really starts there. So, if I, let’s just say I was taking you to lunch and you’re a realtor, Dave. You know, I would first of all sit in my car for a minute before I walked into the lunch, and I always did one thing that I don’t think many people do. I would set my intention for the outcome of that meeting.
[David] That’s really good point. Boy, that’s good. That’s, that’s, so many people arrived right on time, right at the time. They’re rolling up maybe even a moment late. Feeling guilty, burst out, taking the intent, the time to be intentional and seeking and setting a goal for an outcome. That’s really good. That’s a great reminder. I don’t care how good someone is out there, that’s just a good reminder.
[Cindy] Well, it’s night and day because now you’re not just going in. I hear it all the time. I have the best meeting with this realtor. Like we completely gelled. It was amazing. That was two weeks ago. I haven’t heard from them. I haven’t followed up. They have no system. Yeah, exactly. You go in and most of the time, my outcome that I wanted, and I became masterful at this, was my goal was to get a second meeting while I was at the first meeting. Because yeah, you can’t build, you can’t secure the relationship typically in one meeting. Right. So I would go in with the intention of getting a second meeting so that before I left. ’cause if I’m sitting across from you and we’ve just spent 90 minutes together having this really meaningful lunch, and I now pose the question, if I say something to you like, you know what Dave? One of the things that I do with my top referring realtor partners that I love is I meet with them a couple times a year to discuss their you know, marketing campaigns. I think it would be really beneficial for us to schedule a follow-up meeting in a couple of weeks. I’d love to talk through your marketing system for 2026 and see if there’s any suggestions I can give you that might help you expand your business this year. Would you be open to that?
[David] Yeah, that’s really good. I think you know this and, and again, I think there’s one thing that’s really needs to be inserted at this point. You talked earlier about data, the importance of knowing the data. I think looking, we have now so many business intelligence tools. RETR, Modex are two of ’em, where you can go online and find out how, who’s, what realtors are actually doing loans, and then you would have to ask yourself, why am I meeting with someone that isn’t producing business. You could help them get the best systems in place, but they’re not generating business. So, I really think it starts with targeting the top producers. You talk, you work with top loan officers, you target them and you help them become better. I think the same thing needs to be said for MLO mortgage loan originators to be able to go in and target only those realtors that are, have a track record or doing something. Now, if someone’s new in the market and you believe they’re gonna be someone successful that may make sense to work with ’em. But I think it’s, it, it’s one of those things I really interior encourage people to do is check out who you’re talking to. Do you even know if you’re wasting your time or not?
[Cindy] A hundred percent. And today, early on in my career, we didn’t have those tools. But the fact that they’re still readily, readily available today. Yeah. And even I’ll tell you, I remember a situation that was so helpful because one of my top realtor partners stopped calling like we weren’t getting business from ’em. And we were friends. And by this time we had MMI and I remember looking him up ’cause I’m like, he’s obviously dumped us and he is gone somewhere else. You know, we must have done something along the way that he didn’t like. And so, I remember looking him up and I’m like, his loans were going all over the place. He wasn’t directing it to one person, they were going to a myriad of different places. So I called him up and set a meeting with him and I just said, I just really wanna connect. I mean, we were doing so much business together. And he informed me that, you know, people were coming in pre-qualified and he didn’t wanna rock the boat because business had gotten so tough. So he just didn’t refer them to anybody. So, I trained him on how to, how to ask to give me five minutes of their time. And they could work with whatever lender they wanted, but I gave him a script. I physically wrote a script that I sent to Jeremy and I said, will you just ask, just say, Hey, you’ve got a trusted relationship with a local lender that you’ve worked with for years. They’re welcome to work with anyone they wanna work with. But would you just give Cindy a call and give her five minutes of your time? I think it’ll be really helpful for you, and you’ll get a second opinion. And so that’s how we did it, and I want at least 50% of those leads.
[David] Got it back. That’s so important. That really gets into creating the ultimate client experience, you know? And you do that through your processes and your systems that you have. Why is mapping a client journey, which is something you talk about, such a game changer?
[Cindy] Well, like I said, we all have a journey. It’s just whether or not there’s anything about it that’s super memorable. And you know, one of my coaches, Stacia. Stacia’s, a great producer in San Diego, and she worked for Microsoft for many years. One of the reasons I brought her on as a coach is because she’s wired for systems and processes. And so she does a lot of training for our people. She’s amazing. But we, she was at one of my retreats and we did an exercise that we did as a group on creating the ultimate client experience. So she took that and basically built it out on steroids and created her lead to legacy program. But basically it’s the journey of, from the moment a lead comes in the door to one year post-close. So it’s an entire journey mapped out and she didn’t have a big team at the time that we created this. She built it out with, I remember in the boxes for who was gonna do all these tasks. It said TBD. ’cause she didn’t know to be determined. She didn’t know who the person was. Now she has the team that implements all the tasks. But it can start very simple and very small where, ’cause what happens is the lead comes in the door, let’s say they don’t buy a house for six months. What’s your system for following up with that lead to make sure you keep ’em in the court? You know, I mean, there’s so many leads that fall through the cracks because there’s no follow up plan. And ideally, you know, if you’ve got a CRM system that you can program to at least either remind you to make the call to that person, one of my clients, Michelle Town. She’s incredible. I have coached her for 11 years. She was one of the nation’s top producers last year. She funded 310 million last year and she lives on a horse ranch in the middle of nowhere and has a completely virtual team. But her systems are unbelievable. David. They’re dialed to the nines. Jungo is reminding her to call her client. She’s got a completely dialed in system from the time a lead comes in to one year post-close, and she’s as good as her systems and people stay with her because they have such a deep level of trust and she stays top of mind consistently. But when you have a system, and some of my clients recently, we have a client slate, Terry, he’s a newer loan officer, three years into the business. And I love it. He was on one of our trainings about creating the ultimate client experience and within a couple, he’s an implementer and he’s an executor, and Slade started, he said, I’m gonna send like a pre-approval, I’m gonna send a little gift to the client at preapproval because he wanted to make it sticky on the very front end. So they stayed in his court. Right. And I thought it was so great.
[David] That’s right. We wait till at the end to send out a little gift.
[Cindy] That’s he started doing it at the beginning and it was a $25 investment, but he started doing it and started putting some time and energy into creating a more memorable experience within 30 days. He said his realtor partners were noticing his clients. ’cause he’s 30 ish age range. And his friends started buying homes and so he started, he said within 30 days it started to increase his referrals because he built out a client experience. One of the things I did, and I always tell my clients, this is so basic and so simple, but some of the best ideas are. I have my clients tap into what their greatest strengths are. Yeah, like organically. What are your greatest strengths? One of my greatest, so important to know those. Yes. One of my greatest strengths was communication. But does that really set me apart from my competition, maybe not so much so I thought, how can I shine a brighter light on that strength? So I came up with the fact that we had a really good system for communicating with the buyer, the listing agent and the selling agent. We were really good on keeping him abreast on the status of the loan. So I created the Cindy Ertman 10 point milestone communication plan. Now, we already did this, but I put a name to it. I built a flyer around it. I created the, so when I was meeting with someone, I’d say, Hey, one of the things that our realtor partners love about working with our team is our 10 point milestone communication plan. ’cause we have a system around how we’re communicating all the milestones of the loan. You’ll never need to call us for a loan update. And our clients love that about our team, but we delivered to that system. And that was a very simple thing, but, so if you’re gonna grade a system, you need to show up for it. To your point. Yeah. You’ve gotta execute to it. Yes. Now, I didn’t execute mostly to that system. My LOA was responsible for those touch points, and, but we were known for that because people trusted us at such a high level because our communication was so great. So we had a communication, communication and consistency.
[David] I mean, I think in communication you talk about consistency and I think that is such an important aspect of this.
[Cindy] A hundred percent. And that comes back to the point of what you were saying is systems well, and even the the realtor follow-up campaign to just come back to that for a minute is, you know, I had a system and I teach it now, but when you leave that meeting. Before I would even, you know, get back to the office. We have just basic follow up things. Like we had, I think seven things that was part of the system. So if I met with a realtor, I might grab their card at the time I would come back and I would just have hand the card to my assistant. ’cause she knew the next steps I had already text them my contact information. Today, I would text them my digital card, you know, I would give it to her. It goes directly into our database management system. It goes on my call list, because I would call 10 realtors every Monday and 10 realtors every Wednesday. So, they would go onto my follow-up call list that she would put into my calendar. There was a system for our follow up, I wrote a handwritten thank you note to every single person that I met with. Today, I’ve gotta admit I would do a quick one minute video ’cause it’s so much quicker.
[David] So, so much stickier. It’s stickier. It’s really stickier. Yes. Although there’s something about receiving a written note occasionally that goes like, they took the time to write this out and it, that too has impact. So I think it’s a combination. Really good.
[Cindy] A hundred percent, but I would, you know, so I had six or seven automatic follow up things. The second I got back from the meeting. And then again, I had already established the next meeting because the first meeting, so now, and I already have a system. My connection to conversion marketing meeting was already, I already had a system for meeting number two. I didn’t have to think about what I was gonna do at that meeting and in that meeting, when I actually asked for the business and meeting number two, and I have a strategy around how I ask. That’s very organic, right? So again, it saves so much time. ’cause I never have to think about what I’m gonna say in the first meeting ’cause I have it mapped out and we teach that strategy. I know what I’m gonna say in the second meeting. I know how I’m gonna ask for the business and I know how I’m gonna follow up. To have that consistency help me become one of the nation’s top producers.
[David] Taking the time to set up systems and thinking out the next step, next step, next step, and having a deep plan. It’s really what you’re talking about is having a multiple step deep plan if this, then that kind of things. And when you have that kind of intentionality and consistency. It’s unbeatable. Give us some examples of results of people that you’ve worked with, Cindy, your coaching clients specifically. when they have implemented these kind of systems, both from a production standpoint, but I’m also almo almost more interested in quality of life as much as the production. Well, and it’s, you know, we always say we coach the whole person.
[Cindy] Yeah. Because you can’t coach someone just on business if their health is completely outta line or their relationships are a disaster. Most recently, in fact, I’m very, very, I’m proud of Shelly Kanat today, who’s at CMG. She’s at their national sales rally today, and they’ve asked her to come on stage. They’re interviewing her because her business has elevated 98% in the last six months.
[David] Wow. And that’s your, that’s one of your clients. That’s amazing.
[Cindy] Because she started to understand, she revamped her team. She got her team dialed in the right direction. You know, you dis profile the team. You make sure you have the right people in the right seat. So they’re really capable of doing their job effectively. So she revamped the team. She do, you know, dove in to get her systems and her processes. So the team was really clear on their roles, which is really huge. Then she put together a social media strategy. Her video’s amazing. Started doing one video a day, very organic video. She’s very relatable and she just watched her business just completely go through the roof and she’ll probably double it again because she now has built the foundation to be able to expand her capacity for success, which is huge. So super proud of her. One of my clients a few years ago. One of our biggest success stories ever. I never forget my first conversation with Tom Couture out of Lubbock, Texas. He’d been in the business for 42 years and had not been coached, and he said. Cindy, I can’t break 38 million to save my life. Like he just, no matter what he did, and he said, I need some new tools in my tool chest. So, he joined my Mortgage Mastermind Elite group. And the first year, ’cause he didn’t have a team, so we helped him, he ended up hiring two team members. We got them dialed in and he went from 38 to 58 million, which was amazing. Then he joined a second year, which was 2019 slash part of 2020. So, 2020 definitely played that market was hot, which is great, right? But Tom went from 58 million to 132 million and served 579 families that year and it was just extraordinary growth. But the second year he really tapped into our connection to conversion strategy and started conducting first meetings with a real system around how to not only conduct the meeting to connect at a deeper level, but then implemented follow up systems. And his business just exploded. He started being asked to come in to speak before real estate companies. So now instead of one-to-one, he is doing one to many. So, it was exponential growth and he’s a dear friend. He’s on my coaching staff today, and I’m just super, super proud of what he’s created.
[David] I love those stories. I mean, I think that when you hear these kinda stories, you relate. The power of a system and what it can do for someone’s life. And what it can do is ’cause not only they’re having great success, but how do you coach someone? You talk about coaching the whole person. How do you talk about some, with work with someone who feels scattered, they’re over busy, they’re just stretched thin. What’s the first system you would recommend someone? Free, free, free coaching here Moment to our listeners.
[Cindy] What’s the number one 90% of mortgage loan originators. Right. And I think, yeah. The beauty of, and we have three different coaching programs. I can, you know, share screen for a second show if you wanna see them. But we, we really do have three different coaching levels for three different budgets because we know not everybody can afford my high level mortgage Mastermind elite program. We have private coaching, we have two levels of that and then we have an all group program that’s super, super affordable because the reality is it’s hard to do it on your own if you don’t have the system. So, if you can learn from somebody else and start to see that. And, you know, we have a really important concept that we teach to all of our people that you do are not allowed to have more than three cars out of the garage. So a lot of people chase shiny objects. So what we do is we wanna get clear on what are the three things you can focus on that are gonna move the needle. And we can, you can only focus on those three things, period for the next quarter. And so, if it’s building out a, maybe a client journey experience. You can do that in a matter of a few hours with some concentrated effort.
[David] Maybe it’s, yeah, especially when you’re using chat, GPT, it can help be such a powerful tool to help you do that.
[Cindy] A hundred percent. So, it’s about making small shifts. We’re not going from one to 10. We’re just trying to create a basic system, maybe it’s a follow-up campaign, and that’s where you need, so we call it, we start with a foundation of the house. You know, do you have a team member? Do you have any team? Some people have a team and they have the wrong team, and they’re not holding them accountable and they’re not utilizing them. So, we have a whole system around how to build and sustain a high impact team. So, we train people as to how to hire. The right people, how to DISC profile them to make sure we know what dis profile for each position and mortgage, we’ve got sample ads for what you should place if you’re looking to hire an LOA. Yeah, so we start at the beginning, but we start with let’s rebuild the house and build the foundation so that we can get you out of scattered and bring you back to, you know, one of the simplest things that is the hardest to teach and execute is to spend, I committed. I have always been committed to an hour a day of kind of intentional prospecting, but having a plan. So, knowing who you’re gonna talk to on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Brian Sewell is one of my coaches, and he was in my high level mastermind group for three years. Brian has built out a system of who he’s talking to. He talks to a hundred people between Monday and Thursday every single week, and he knows statistically that if he makes those a hundred calls and stays in touch with his realtors and referral partners and client base, He will close 18 loans a month on average. And it’s, it’s proven time and time again because he has a system around his communication vehicle. So yeah, that’s,
[David] so there’s so many good points. I think that, because I would love to have you share your screen, but the point of it’s vast majority of our people listen on an audio basis. So here’s the, the thing, listeners, we’re gonna put all the links to the things Cindy’s talking about in our show notes and listeners, you want to go back and go through these things. Cindy has coached some of the top top performers, and you’ve already heard some of the stories here and there’s so many more. Cindy we’ve run out of time. It’s one of those things I could, I just love listening to you. And so they always say, end on a high note. We’re on a high note. So how can people reach you?
[Cindy] Just, I would love it to go. You can just go to, go to cindy ertman.com is probably C-I-N-D-Y-E-R-T-M-A-N. There is a schedule, an appointment button at the top, and You know, we offer just a free coaching session. It’s not a big sales pitch. We’ll share our programs if you’re interested, but we really do try to give value and try to tap into people’s challenges and give ’em some valuable tools to walk away with. Because I think you can probably tell I am like passionate about this business. You are seeing people grow and, and giving them tools to go to the next level. It just, why get up every morning? So, great purpose in life. I would love to help anybody that needs some help and support this year. I love, and it’s gonna be a great year. Yeah, it’s gonna be an awesome year. And you know, Zig Ziglar said, you know how to be successful, help someone else get, how for you to be successful is help someone get what they want and be successful. And you doing that so successfully. Cindy, congratulations on the many years of success and the profound difference you’ve had on so many lives. And the best part is you’re young. You still have so much to contribute. From my perspective, I’m 75, so you’re still young, very young, and you have so much to contribute. So thank you for being here.
[Cindy] Super excited to be here. Here. Thanks so much for having me.
[David] Oh, it’s an honor. Can’t wait to spend more time with you, Cindy. Bless you
[Cindy] You too. Take care. Bless you.
Important Links
Cindy Ertman is a nationally recognized mortgage industry leader – a transformational coach, visionary entrepreneur, and CEO of The Defining Difference®, a premier coaching and training company for high-performance mortgage professionals. A five-time recipient of Mortgage Executive Magazine’s “Top 100 Most Influential Mortgage Executives” and a Top 100 Mortgage Loan Originator for more than a decade, Cindy has built, scaled, and led at the highest levels of the industry.
With over 35 years of real-world mortgage experience, Cindy doesn’t teach theory—she teaches what works. She has built billion-dollar teams, coached top producers to extraordinary growth, and helped leaders create businesses that scale without sacrificing their health, relationships, or peace of mind.
Her mission is simple and powerful: to help high-performing mortgage professionals break through what’s holding them back, lead with intention, and build sustainable success that lasts. Through proven systems, strategic clarity, and high-level accountability, Cindy helps her clients turn overwhelm into structure—and ambition into results.
If you’re ready to think bigger, operate smarter, and redefine what success really looks like, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.