Till the time such approval is given by ….
Till the time such approval is given by the court, the borrower may redeem through his or her paying up of the outstanding amounts along with costs.
He or she will forward it to Fannie Mae, who in turn has the option of accepting or rejecting the offer, or even making a counter offer that may require further negotiations.
Being able to save for a rainy day when every dollar brought in seems to go to the price of an umbrella, saving for an emergency is hard to do.
Heres The True Story Of A Million Dollar Producer
By Lew Nason
During the past 26 years my son Jeremy and I have had the distinct pleasure of helping hundreds of insurance agents, financial advisors and financial planners to go to the very, very top of the industry in life insurance and annuity sales. What follows is the recent success story of one of those people. Phil Calandra came 3 years ago to us after first attending the Missed Fortune TEAM Training, because he was struggling to make their system work. Here is his story, as he tells it
How Do You Earn Half-a-Million Dollars During Your First Year as a Financial Advisor?
By Phil Calandra, RFC
Hardly a week goes by without another financial planner, financial advisor or insurance agent asking me how I made half-a-million dollars during my first year of practice. Or, theyll ask how I earned close to a million dollars during my second year of work helping clients. I am going to tell you my true story. But, for me, the important story is how many people I have helped, not how much money I have made. It is all about how I helped my valued clients to earn more, achieve more, and advance toward their financial goals and objectives. That is the big picture and that is my priority. Assisting clients in resolving their money concerns that is what financial planning is all about for me.
Countless numbers of people have also asked me how I made MDRT during my first eight months in the life and annuity arena. Or, they ask how I made MDRT Top of the Table during my first full-year in the business. I am going to tell you what I did, plus what I didnt do, to achieve such a high level of success, so quickly. If you are serious about having a similar rewarding career as an advisor, then I urge you to get more serious with what you are doing.
When I decided to leave the corporate world in 2005, I departed a fat six-figure position with lots of perks and status. I wanted to help others in a very meaningful way. I wanted more servant leadership in my life. I did not want to push products and services onto trusting people. I no longer wanted to serve an ultimate objective that dictated: How much more can we get out of this customer?
For my lifes work I needed something far more different, something more satisfying, where I could be of real positive benefit and enjoy lasting personal relationships. Money was not the deciding factor for me. My successful experience was in corporate finance. I worked with many of the Fortune 500 companies in the USA. I traveled extensively and interacted with CEO types and top executives. But, I found myself longing for kitchen table type meetings where my skills could help real people. Middle class American citizens are largely ignored or exploited by our corporations, institutions, and organizations of all types. Our average American citizen is even exploited by our city, county, state and federal governments. Yet, they are the most important element of our society. They play by the rules but only keep getting shafted more-and-more. They and their children deserve much better treatment. I wanted to serve them, truly help them, and assist them in protecting the financial worth and improving their financial futures.
Later, when I became a financial advisor I did not target the super wealthy. And I never expected to make so much money from work that I dearly love. Every morning I rush to the office, happy, and eager for another good day of meeting wonderful people (both clients and prospects). My real sense of satisfaction comes when the client is pleased and sees the results they need.
I Invested In Myself
From the beginning, the one thing I knew I would have to do is invest in myself. The school of hard knocks would take too long to create and replace my existing lifestyle and income. So, I started seeking out training from the very best in the industry. I easily spent $15,000 on coaching and training materials in my first year. I went to Missed Fortune TEAM training (before I even had a license), the MoneyTrax Mentoring Program, and I purchased every life insurance and annuity marketing and sales program developed by Lew and Jeremy Nason at the Insurance Pro Shop. Lew Nason became one of my first real coaches, my mentor and a dear friend.
What Lew stressed is you must learn two things to be successful. 1. You are in the marketing business. 2. You are in the financial advice business, in that order. If you dont have the right people to see, you cant make it. Marketing is the key to always being in front of the right prospects.
And, if you want to make the kind of money that less than 1% of the advisors make, then you have to do what most arent doing. What many advisors are not doing is Doing what is right. If you put the client first and take care of solving their issues and concerns, your success will follow.
The most important task we all have, both in our business and personal lives, is to build true relationships. What is a true relationship? Well, it can be described in a number of ways. I believe it is a connection between two people that is sincere, uplifting, joyful, and continuously strengthened by trust and empathy. To build true relationships you must work at this connection and live by the premise: It is better to give, than to receive.
In our business, people buy from people they like and trust. You must understand the importance, right now, of expressing and giving of yourself to other people. Whether it is in your business life or your personal life, the customer or person you are trying to build a true relationship with, has to feel appreciated and loved. It is simply the Law of Attraction. When you give out, you will get back, eventually. Coach Lew told me early on: People dont care how much you know, until they know how much you care.
Prior to joining the ranks of the self-employed, I was a student of the great motivators and an avid reader of success literature. That universal law and truth has been taught for centuries. I remember my coaching calls with Lew recounting the great Napoleon Hill: What man can conceive and believe, he can achieve. What have you read lately? It is important to feed your mind and build your skills, so you are sharp for every opportunity to help your prospective client. And, as the legendary speaker and author Charlie Tremendous Jones puts it; You are the same today as you will be in five years except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read.
When I started I did not have a Project 100, I did not call my family, friends and acquaintances. I did not pitch one single corporate manager or executive that I had been in boardrooms with previously. I knew my strengths and weaknesses. I was an accomplished presenter and public speaker. The dinner seminar was my natural marketing method. Now, I was fortunate to have enough start-up capital to jump right into the business this way. However, you CAN do it without a bankroll or rich spouse, if you learn how to properly use Joint Ventures, Free Educational Workshops, Free Reports and other proven marketing methods to consistently attract the right prospects to you. If you want to reach the top, use your resources wisely and get going Start small, be consistent, and never quit.
I was told by Mr. Calmen Mendel, one of the all time great Northwestern Mutual agents, This is the poorest paying easy work I would ever do. It is tough, but the people in your community, no matter what niche you plan on serving, need you. The financial well being of our country is in a fragile state. We are in a recession proof industry and people need real solutions. Identify the niche you want to serve and become an expert at marketing and consulting to that group. The dinner seminar was key to me getting off to a fast start. I used every seminar mail company out there. The folks at Response Mail Express (Jennifer Lowery) and Seminar Crowds (Clyde Cleveland and Susie Zolo) taught my assistant and I the basics. We then made every mistake possible. But we stayed with it. I have now created multiple seminar presentations, and my assistant Jennifer will tell you, I am changing things constantly.
Once again, I learned everything I could from the top producers. Take the time and invest in yourself. Some of the best in our business are: Don Blanton, Karlan Tucker, Craig Randall, and Lew Nason. Listen and learn from them and then fit things to your persona.
Are you sending out client newsletters? Do you have a complete follow-up system for every aspect of your practice? Are you sending out greeting cards, birthday and anniversary cards? Do you have an assistant and staff to strengthen your capabilities? These are all things I learned and figured out from day one that you must do. You must pay attention to detail and give your very best to your clients, prospects and community. Take the time to train and develop yourself and the staff around you.
In future articles, I will share with you specific things to do immediately. They are the activities and things I did and still do, that have taken me to the top of the industry.
Phil Calandra, RFC is President of Pinnacle Financial Services in Kennesaw (An Atlanta suburb), Georgia. He has been recognized by the International Association of Registered Financial Consultants, as ” One of our industry’s best and brightest. Calandra makes us all proud!”
Is there any question that Phil Calandra exemplifies the very best in our industry? Its a pleasure to help someone who is so dedicated to helping others.
Lew and Jeremy Nason
Marketing and Sales Coach
‘The 9 Out Of 10 Guys’
Claim your free Report “How to Attract & Sell Your Perfect Prospects” at
http://www.FastInsuranceSales.com
Where you’ll learn how to make 6-figures a year in insurance.
Yes To Limiting Top Executives Compensation
By Debra L. Morrison
I was particularly encouraged by the top executive compensation limits set forth in the Stimulus Plan, yet dismayed when they were eliminated or watered down.
The Stimulus Plan passed by a 246-183 and a 60-38 margin in the House and Senate respectively. Although Republicans Collins, Spechter and Snow all were instrumental in hammering out several compromises, nary a House Republican cast a FOR vote; some predicting ruin if it passed.
Are we not IN a ruinous condition? Haven’t these same Republicans asked an unemployed person, uninsured family or elderly citizen eating cat food recently how they’re doing?
If it wasn’t such a serious situation I might have been amused to read of worry there’ll be a brain drain on Wall Street, if top level executive comp was limited. Recently insiders’ voiced concerns that excessive taxes being voted upon AIG’s & Merrill Lynch’s top officials’ retention bonuses were somehow unfair.
Responding to our government’s attempts to reclaim $4.4 million of retention bonuses for Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae’s four top executives, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart said, “We run a great risk of these same employees deciding this is the last straw and walking away.”
Many Americans who do theirs, and also the work of those laid off, could easily cop the “last straw” excuse, but do not. Yet according to their annual Securities and Exchange Commission report, Fannie Mae apparently paid their Deputy Chief Financial Officer a tidy $1.1 million retention bonus AND an additional $160,000 cash bonus for filing their financial statements on time. Call me old fashioned, but I remember times when if you didn’t do your job on time you were demoted or fired.
With all due respect, Mr. Lockhart, just where would these overpaid executives of failed agencies “walk” to? Last I looked, a fair amount of unemployment has set up camp, and hedge fund managers-the once easy fall back position from corporate America-are in line to buy tents.
Apparently there is a growing belief that there aren’t any top level executives out there with a desire to return to some semblance of integrity, who would gain pride-yes other types of gains do exist besides the almighty greenback–in being instrumental in breathing new life into our once proud, now dilapidated, financial institutions.
Michael S. Melbinger, an executive compensation lawyer at Winsteon & Strawn in Chicago commented on the Stimulus Plan’s proposed top executive pay limitations, “There is no pay for performance in this.” Have we not already issued FAR too much pay for FAR too little performance for FAR too many years on Wall Street?
Are there no motivated individuals whom may be enticed with the near promise of fame and future book or movie deals (that would surely provide more wealth than an annual salary OR bonus) when they put their shoulder to the grindstone and lifted their companies out of the ashes and into a Phoenix state? Might even a few talented individuals remain of the Warren Buffet ilk-in 2008 he received the same $100,000 of base salary he has for 25 years, and $25,000 of director fees– that would be motivated by their good name being upheld, or their not-so-good name being raised up a notch or two, when they performed?
Yes, President Obama’s admonition for us all to “pitch in” applies even to top executives. It’s time they use their brains for a tiny bit more than their family’s luxury ski trips and ultra (not-green) fleets of bling-bling cars and otherwise opulent life styles, and roll up their sleeves to restore even a modicum of consumer confidence in the system.
Not only would this be smart, it may better ensure that we don’t touch off class wars. The middle class is shrinking rapidly. There’s a clearer distinction between the haves and the have nots; and the have nots are restless.
So not just is it moral to provide hope for hard working Americans, it is economically essential to stop the horrifically steep increases in unemployment. Let’s get people back to work. Some of them are downright hungry; some justifiably angry. For those of us with jobs and food, we’re looking for some measure of controls on those whose appetite for unlimited personal gain is apparently unrequited.
As a financial advisor, I’d be grateful for some signs that our government is strengthening Wall Street, so that I could encourage people to “invest in the stock of America” again.
Absent that confidence, the employed Larry Lunch buckets and Nancy Nurses will park their 401(k) or 403(b) in a fixed income sub-account. Not only will that not hasten the stock markets’ recovery, but it will be damning to their long-term purchasing power; very possibly translate into them having to work another 10 years just to make up the lost performance compared to that of stocks, at least historically speaking.
Apparently the big fear is that companies whose executives are greedy beyond words (OR works) will seek to repay TARP monies soonest so they can be out-from-under the new executive compensation restrictions. Then, the fear continues, particularly banks could restrict the flow of loans, etc., that were designed to increase liquidity into the system-you know, Main Street.
Clearly they forgot to insert the “instructions for use” page into the TARP check envelopes; the ones where the banks were supposed to be lending to mom and pop America, not sucking up other foreign or domestic financial institutions to buttress their balance sheets, or worse yet, pay themselves big year-end bonuses. Remind me, how then would the non-flow of monies stop if TARP monies were to be repaid?
Failed companies’ top execs need to admit to themselves and their families they weren’t worth those groups of zeroes, nor will they receive such disproportionate compensation for horrific performance going forward. They’ll perform in a fiduciary capacity and take what the shareholders feel is commensurate to their performance for the next 2 years. They’ll acknowledge this will indeed involve a lifestyle adjustment–something they could receive free training on, from droves of other executives laid off even since September 2008.
There’s no silver bullet; yet there’s a hole in our collective row boat. We can’t waste time fussing about whose end it’s in; start bailing. The votes have been cast; a Stimulus Bill has passed. There’s no time for smug, “I’m not responsible cause I didn’t vote for it” excuses. If there’s anything I hate it’s a quitter, worse yet a sore loser, or a person who refuses to entertain an idea that didn’t originate in their own corpus collosum. Let all that rationale comprise your campaign rhetoric next election. In the meantime, roll up your sleeves as elected politicians and work till the job is done.
What history will report on, is who did what to contribute to sound legislation to monitor the use of these Stimulus Plan funds; best ensuring that the end result is not perfect, yet the most favorable, towards solving America’s biggest problems.
This country, its citizens, and their financial health and hopes rest on your bi-partisan cooperation.
Debra L. Morrison, CFP, MS, AEP is a sought after international motivational speaker who motivates audiences of mature women to master their finances, through generous helpings of humor and analogy.
