Justin Stoddart
Welcome back to The Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host, Justin Stoddart and I'm thrilled today to talk about leadership. Sales is leadership. Anything that we do in life in which we have impact, in which we grow anything, requires leadership. The challenge is many of us struggle with being a great leader. Today, we're going to talk all about that. Before we get into introducing today's guest and the rest of today's topic, I want to remind you that you can get a show summary, a weekly summary of every show that happens with show notes by going to thinkbigger.real estate, go sign up for that. I've got it looking really, really good. You're gonna be really proud of what you see, you'll be proud of me for what you see. And the other thing that I want to point out is that if you're watching this in another market, and you're interested in finding either a great loan officer and or a great real estate agent, I would encourage you to reach out to me, private message me, send me a message. I work with the best of the best, I'd be more than happy to make a recommendation. With that, let me introduce today's guest. His name is Chad Krober. Chad first and foremost, thank you for coming on the show today. I appreciate you being here.
Chad Krober
Thank you, Justin. It's good to be here. Thank you.
Justin Stoddart
Great to have you here. So Chad Chad's brand is The Purpose Driven Lender, and we're going to talk about that tech today's show is going to be a representation of Chad being that. Chad actually leads a team of 10 originators and support staff, out of the Portland market. He and his team have been for the past three years in the retail lending space, a top 250 producing team in the country. So Chad knows a thing or two about leadership, he knows a thing or two about being a top producer. And for those of you that are able to stay around for the whole episode, I want you to mark on your date, October 25, it's a Friday from 8:30 to 4:30, there's going to be a very special event happening here in Portland, that is going to be free to you, but it's going to be life changing when it comes to being a great leader. So stay tuned for that if you don't make it all the way to the end, look in the show notes and you'll see more information about that. So again, thank you for being here Chad. I'm going to ask I'm going to start with this question because I believe that the most important leadership that we'll ever do it starts off in the home, so I'm going to ask you a question about you probably aren't prepared for but a guy like you is always prepared for this kind of question. What's your favorite part about being a dad, Chad?
Chad Krober
You know, honestly, I think the favorite part of being a dad is having the opportunity to honestly learn from my mistakes, and then model that to my kids and show them that I am learning how to become the best version of myself. Even when I trip over myself. I don't handle the situation. Well, I can model to my kids and say, Hey, you know what, Dad, I did not do this thing. Well, or I did not handle this situation. Well, or I did not model this behavior to you well, but I'm working on it. And I need to tell you, I'm sorry. And I need to ask for your forgiveness.
Chad Krober
And it's amazing to me how my kids are so quick to say "It's okay Dad, I know you're doing you're trying to work you're trying to grow, I know you're trying to get better."
Chad Krober
Our kids just want to love us more than anything. And that's honestly probably the one of the most enjoyable parts of being a parent is being able to learn from my own errors, and then model and teach that to my kids.
Justin Stoddart
Powerful concepts. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. For those that are maybe new to the show, this is about thinking bigger than real estate, right? We're fortunate to be involved in a great industry from different angles, yet, this becomes a platform, Chad, you and I talked about that before the show about how for you it's really not about mortgages anymore. Maybe it never was but this whole concept of being a purpose driven lender, talk to me a little bit about kind of as a prelude into today's topic. Like what matters more to you than originating loans.
Chad Krober
Yeah. You know, I I'll admit, probably up till about maybe five, six years ago, I was way hung up, was hung up way more on the deal. I was I was focused on how do I close more loans? How do I increase my wallet? How do I increase my bank account? And I went through a few life situations that caused me to have to re examine to look in the mirror and say, why am I doing what I'm doing? You know it, you can jokingly say yeah, I'm 44 years old. Was it a midlife crisis? Maybe not. But just the timing, everything played out in my late 30s, early 40s. And I sat back one day and said, you know, what, if if I'm gone tomorrow, and I'm no longer writing loans, will the world even though that I existed? And I had to look in the mirror and say, No, probably not. Because another great loan officer will come along and replace me the day that I decided to hang it up and stop doing. And so I realized that I needed to change my attitude to say, Okay, I get the opportunity to interact with dozens and dozens and dozens and hundreds of people over a year's time. What if I use my platform instead? To say, How can I make a difference in someone's life? Instead of just writing alone? How can I bless them? How can I encourage them? How can I model to them? Things that will make them walk away from our conversation and say there's something different about that person, and I want to be I want to become a better version of myself. And so it just took me down this path of saying, All right, mortgages are a tool. And mortgages are a way to pay my bills. But ultimately, my attitude needs to be I'm here to serve people. And I think it comes back to the whole idea of servant leadership. We are here to serve others. And I think you actually just had a guest here recently who was talking about that, who leads a team that was and that, you know,
Justin Stoddart
Yes, Erik Hatch.
Chad Krober
I thought I caught that briefly. I didn't get to watch the whole thing, but I caught a snippet of and I went guys nailing it. He I think the quote that I saw was like, "Nobody works for me, I work for them."
Unknown Speaker
I mean, that's the whole concept of being a servant leader is you want to serve those around you. And when you come in with an attitude of humbleness, and of saying, you know what you all can teach me, because I really don't really know much, honestly. But I'm going to do my best to help all of us, I'm going to help our tribe get to the finish line in whatever it is that we're trying to accomplish. Then all of a sudden, you have a heart attitude where you can begin to grow and you can be you can expand your boundaries and begin to really, I think leave an impact on people's lives.
Justin Stoddart
I love it Chad. It was interesting, I'm actually reading the book by Ray Dalio called Principles. You know, probably one of the greatest hedge funds managers of all time. One of his key principles is actually humility. A guy has every reason to not be humble, he realized that he began to accelerate his own success and impact on the world when he stopped thinking that he knew everything and started to look around to realize like, I can learn from everybody here and create a what he called a meritocracy, which was the best ideas win. It doesn't matter if he's the, you know, the founder of the company, Bridgewater, that that isn't what matters, who who has the best ideas. That's what wins. And I think it takes a lot of humility to be a leader and say, Hey, your ideas bette...
