1149: How to Stand Out, Multiply Your Opportunities, and Win People’s Confidence with Justin Humphries

Pete Mockaitis
Justin, welcome!

Justin Humphries
Hey, Pete, great to be here. Appreciate you having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am excited to be chatting. We’ve known each other for just about five years now here in Tennessee. And, boy, I say this and I mean this, not just because we’re pals, but it sure seems that you’re awesome at your job.

Justin Humphries
Well, much appreciated. I think you’re awesome at yours as well, and I’ve enjoyed listening to your podcast over those last five years, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Now your job, specifically, is you’re in the mortgage game. You’ve assisted me with some real estate mortgage-y lending things, and I was very impressed at the way you delivered. But what I got you on here today for is, you know, here we are in 2026, and people speak about the job market being terrifying, and here you are, a younger feller, still in your 20s, and you recently made a switch and found yourself with a hefty signing bonus.

And I was like, “Well, is this an anomalous character or what’s going on here with Justin?” Please, can you orient us a little bit to you’re in the mortgage game, and you took a new role, and what’s going on?

Justin Humphries
Yeah, so, essentially, the way that I look at mortgage as a self-producing loan originator, I control my own pipeline, I control my customer relationships, I control my referral partner relationships, but what that also means is I control revenue to the company that I work for.

So it’s less of an employee-employer relationship and more of a decision, a strategic decision on my part as to which platform is going to benefit my business the most. And, of course, they need and want that revenue because without my revenue, they don’t have any revenue.

So they are, what I found in that job search is that you did have companies that were willing to, essentially, advance, so to speak, a portion of their revenue, their future revenue based on my past production in terms of a sign-on bonus for some guarantees that I would stick around for a little bit.

So it’s a very different type of a job search than what you would traditionally think of where you go and you apply for multiple jobs online, but it was more of, “Hey, I had companies that were chasing me that wanted that production and that revenue into their own businesses.”

So being able to control that revenue stream, I found gave me a good amount of negotiating power on the front end.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so originator, producer, revenue, we are speaking in a language in sort of sales-ish.

Justin Humphries
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
So it’s not so much that you’re just super swell at taking care of the customer, although you are, but rather you’re a bit of a rainmaker, if you will. With you, come relationships and the prospect of, “Oh, we’re going to get more mortgages in the door and more revenue for this business.”

Justin Humphries
Yeah, that’s right. So being a rainmaker is a great way to put it, right, in terms of that control over the relationships and the partnerships because I’m not so much selling a product of the company that I work for, as much as I’m selling myself and my personalized services and value that I bring my referral partners and my customers.

And I want to make sure that the platform that I’ve worked for, i.e., my company that employs me, is going to provide them with as much more value than the previous company that I worked for.

But it’s not as, yeah, it’s not as black and white as I’m just selling a product that the company provides for me on company relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. Because, in many ways, there’s a range of products in terms of lending, whether it’s a VA loan, or an FHA loan. And then all kinds of little nuances associated with it, or this is actually non-conforming in the US sense of the word to the Fannie Mae and the Freddie Mac world.

And so you know a lot of stuff. And, in fact, I’ve been impressed. You often tend to surprise real estate agents when you call them about their own listings and inform them about some cool lending financing opportunities that could exist for that property that they’re not even aware of.

Justin Humphries
Yeah, that’s right. So, well, and the beauty of mortgage is it’s a very commoditized business. So I’m not selling loans that another company necessarily is completely incapable of doing. It’s more or less a commodity and the service behind it is me and my team and what we bring to the table for that referral partner and for the customer and the client experience.

So, most every lender is going to do in FHA loan, they’re going to do a conforming loan, they’re going to have some of the non-conforming goodies, special loan products, you know, 20, 30, 40, 200 different loan products, right?

Some of which are very niche-y and required specialized knowledge. Others are, you know, something we encounter on a daily basis. So having that specialized knowledge, I found that it does help out quite a bit when you’re having those conversations with those referral partners.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so can you tell us a little bit about, so you made a switch recently to another mortgage company? Now, how did that come about? In a world where some people are really spooked and they feel like jobs are scarce and layoffs are happening, you had a few people vying for you at the same time.

Justin Humphries
Yeah, so it ended up being You know a combination of a couple things, right? I’m always being recruited. My production is public knowledge, so can go and pull it up with my licensing information. And so the numbers and the the quantitative value, so to speak, to a company is publicly available and people are constantly reaching out and constantly calling.

So it’s, hey, there’s always the optionality to move. So there were a couple things that were happening with the platform and a company that I was with before that were, I think, suboptimal.

And so I had expressed that they were suboptimal, was willing to work to help make things workable in the way that I thought they should go, was rebuffed a few different times on that. So, eventually, decided, “Hey, I don’t think I’m happy staying here. I don’t think this is the platform that’s going to bring the most value to me and my referral partners and my clients. So I’m going to move.”

And then once you make that decision, you start listening and hearing for those opportunities. So just like if you’re looking for a vehicle, I mean, I have a truck, so I have a Toyota Tundra, and when you start looking for a new car, looking for a vehicle, you start seeing Tundras, Toyota Tundras. You start looking and seeing the vehicle that you are searching for constantly?

The reticular activating system, I believe is what it’s called. And so I started getting that. I started noticing those spam calls that were just spam calls a month prior. And now they’re like, “Wow, this is an opportunity.” So I started taking some of those. So I landed with about seven or eight different opportunities on my plate.

Pete Mockaitis
Eight? Okay.

Justin Humphries
Yeah, just from listening, right? And two or three of which, about three turned out to be really good and pretty appealing, either way. But what ended up happening is I ended up finding my role through a networking event. So through my BNI group, which I know we may have mentioned when we talked, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
BNI? Business Networking International created by Ivan Misner, guest of the show. Hey! Hey!

Justin Humphries
So, through BNI, there was a referral partner and a real estate agent, BNI, that had known a company and, specifically, a team that was looking to hire somebody in our area here.

All the calls and all the listing that I did in the marketplace, boiled down to, “Okay, let’s have a conversation.” And that conversation turned into really three firm offers on the table. And I went with the platform and the terms that were most beneficial.

So all of it happened, I mean, in a relative short amount of time. It was very interesting how that all came about when it comes to just keeping my ear to the ground and just looking for the opportunities that were there the entire time, if that makes sense.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is good. So I’d like to zoom out just a little bit for those who are saying, “Okay, Pete, I don’t do mortgages. I don’t do sales. What can I learn from this Justin fella?” I think it’s intriguing, a couple of points there.

One, you said your production is common knowledge. So someone people are logging in, I guess that’s why you’re getting all these calls from randos, is they’re saying, “Okay, who’s doing a lot of mortgage loans? Okay. This is Justin character. Oh, that’s a good number. Wait, he hasn’t been doing this that long. Oh, intriguing. All right.”

So that’s pretty nifty is that, in a way, numbers, black and white, very appealing, but I’m thinking that there are many ways we can have our expertise, our value, what we can bring to the table in a public format in terms of maybe they are listed, maybe you’ve got a blog or a podcast, some content stuff, or maybe you’ve got patents or papers or science things.

I’m thinking about Zuckerberg going wild, giving fat offers to all these AI scientists. They were known, like, “Hey, I am a guy who can get some AI breakthroughs, and this is what you need.” And so Mark Zuckerberg comes knocking at the door to get those kinds of folks.

Justin Humphries
Yeah, I mean, even LinkedIn, too, is a platform for showcasing, you know, in the bio section, what you do, putting some numbers to it, making it quantifiable, I think is key. In my industry, everything is quantifiable, right? It’s all about the numbers.

And they really do make a big difference when the decision is, “Okay, am I going to be on kind of a standard or more average or mediocre level? Or is this going to be, you know, my number is going to be top 10%, top 5%?”

Because I think that’s when you start really getting sought after, is what I found as well. When my numbers climbed from, “Okay, I’m kind of average or median early on, first couple of years,” to, “Okay, now we’re not elite-elite yet,” and I’m still not, working towards that, but top five to 10% is when people really start seeking you because the top 1%, oftentimes top half of 1% never move.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, that’s interesting, and I like what you say about the numbers. And I say this a lot when it comes to working with resumes. Back in the day, I’ve looked at many many resumes and that was often a huge opportunity for improvement in terms of, if you could say, “Oh, I provide excellent customer service.” Like, okay.

As opposed to, “Oh, I spearheaded these initiatives that improved our net promoter score from 21 to 53.” Like, “Whoa!” Like, folks who are in the know, who are thinking about a net promoter score, NPS, they say, “Holy smokes! That would be amazing if this person could drive that kind of improvement over for us.”

Or in terms of being public available, now I’m thinking about, “Is it contributing…?” for software people, like, I don’t know the lingo, the GitHub, their repos and their commits and their stars. Like, that world that people get the memo, like, “Oh, this person has an impressive track record. They are generating a result that is quantified and clear that I like, need, want in my organization.”

Justin Humphries
Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I was also intrigued by just the networking piece. So you’re in the BNI, Business Networking International Group, and so you’re actively investing there. And I know that you’re also in a mastermind group full of real estate type folk. And so you’re putting some real dollars into that as well as real time and travel to deepen those relationships.

Justin Humphries
Yeah, I mean, to me, you’ve heard the saying, right, “My net worth is my network,” or, “My network is my net worth.” I think the reverse is a correct one. But that has been so true in my business. And everything I do is relationship-driven. It starts with that point of trust with either the client or the referral partner, whoever I make contact with first, especially with referral partners, everything is relationship-driven.

It’s all about, “How can I protect my relationships? How can I grow my relationships? How can I create new ones, nurture current ones, maybe rebuild or build old ones?” And the BNI group is a huge part of that.

Now in the investor group, that’s a very different type of networking, right? Because it’s a crowded room with a lot of people that do what I do, but it’s also a high-trust, high-transaction room. So you have people in that space that are transacting on the real estate investment side, 100 plus times per year, right?

And, obviously, those people like to work with the same people that they’ve been working with, right? So that is less a, “Okay, send me a referral that’s going to close one client,” to, “Hey, land a client or two, and build that relationship, build that trust with them, be consistent over time to grow a relationship there.”

And that’s a little bit longer of a time span in terms of revenue being generated. I found that BNI, because, again, it’s a higher-trust, higher-transaction, non-exclusive room, too. This is two very interesting, very good networking opportunities for me but also very different.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and it’s intriguing. And so outside, again, mortgages or real estate or sales, I’m just thinking about how there’s a lot of studies done about the power of the weak tie, the relationships, it’s not your immediate friends, family, folks that you see in community organizations, but someone, oh, you went to college with somebody, you met them at an event and you kind of stayed in touch, and that opens up opportunities when they occur.

And that has, in fact, happened to me in terms of Podcast Movement. I went there and I’ve met people and we continued to collaborate in all kinds of ways. I was at my podcast mastermind group meeting in person last week, and it was awesomely fun.

And we are continuing to share knowledge and best practices and, “Oh, here’s a great publicist, and here’s a great book agent, and here’s a great guest for your show, and here’s a cool tactic I’ve used to grow my show.”

Like, all that knowledge-sharing stuff and relationship-building stuff, I think, is tremendously powerful when you’re in the job, just doing better, as well as highlighting new opportunities where you might land.

Justin Humphries
Yeah, you talked, I like the phrase you used “a weak tie,” right? And something else that I’ve noticed where weak ties, a seemingly weak tie, is particularly powerful where you may not even know them whatsoever, would be affinity groups, right?

You mentioned college, which is, so I went to the University of Alabama, we’re all tied. But somebody that went to the University of Alabama, that’s an affinity group, you know, an alumnus there. Religious organizations, churches, that’s an affinity group where you don’t even have to know that person, but there’s a built-in trust by the nature of you both belonging to that same group, even if it’s large and largely, like you mentioned, a weak tie.

So I’ve noticed that in my own business and within networking, too, that ability of those weak ties and sharing affinity groups just to strike up and create conversations and conversations leading into revenue and closed business.

Pete Mockaitis
And now, of course, a key thing for these relationships to really be fruitful from a career or a business perspective is trust, and a key part of trust is just your competence, your awesomeness. And I’ll just brag on you for a moment, Justin. You do this amazingly.

I was trying to refinance a situation and they were just so slow. It was taking months. And I was like, “Justin, what’s the deal here?” And you said, “You know, I think the deal here is they probably miscategorized or something, something, something, and run into trouble with this and that. So what you’ve got to do is you got to…”

And so you told me what to do. And I told them, “Hey, man, we’ve got a few days. If you can’t pull it together, I’m just going to go over to Justin.” And, go figure, they kind of, you know, kicked into gear from there. And then we did a subsequent real estate deal, which was cool.

And you just know your stuff, and realtors often tell you this, you know stuff that they did not know. And you’re wildly quick in terms of, “Hey, I need a letter to put together in my offer.” And I think I timed you once, it was like four minutes from “I call you” to “I have a letter.”

Justin Humphries
It’s not always that fast, but sometimes, yeah. You catch me at the right time.

Pete Mockaitis
And so it was just wild as nine days compared to the other lender that I was trying to work with. And so, sure enough, that means I am singing your praises. It’s like, “Oh, dude, hey,” and I have numerous times, it’s like, “If you’re ever doing anything mortgage-y, you just want to talk to Justin. You just do.”

And I mean that wholeheartedly, and so that speaks volumes. Because if you were kind of phoned it in, and just kind of barely sort of kind of getting it done, but in a way that was in no way remarkable, we wouldn’t be so fired up to recommend you.

Justin Humphries
And I’d say, you know, one thing I learned early on in my career, I didn’t come up with this, I forget who did, but it was somebody noteworthy, much more noteworthy than myself. But people do business because they know, like, and trust you, right?

But they keep doing business with you because you solve problems that they have. And so that’s always been my focus is, “What’s the problem here?” whether that’s the client, the customer, or the referral partner, right?

With the customer, with you, Pete, you needed that letter in two minutes, three minutes, four minutes so that you could execute on that house. That was the “problem” right, in your circumstances. For the referral partner, it might be, “Hey, they want to grow their business, but their conversion rate is not super strong. So how can I help them convert more clients?”

Or it might be, “Hey, I want to just keep the business I’ve got, but I want to do it with less time and with less headache.” So, like, “Okay, that’s their problem. How do I work on that?” So that first step, the first half of that equation to generating that sustainable business referrals, etc., is people have to know you, right?

Obviously, marketing, top of the funnel is huge. They got to like you. You got to be likable. You can’t be rude, mean, etc. You can’t be incompetent. They got to trust you with their transaction. That’s earned. And then the second half, and the more important half, to maintain that relationship is you have to solve their problems.

And you got to keep solving them. Because there’s always somebody, and in my industry this is definitely the case, there’s always somebody knocking at the door of that client, that referral partner relationship that says, “Hey, I can do this and I can do this, and I’m going to promise the world.”

You can lose that partnership, or you can lose that client in a heartbeat if you waver in your execution. And that is not a fun experience, as a whole.

Pete Mockaitis
For anybody.

Justin Humphries
No, for anybody, right? But, as a whole, it’s like, “Hey, if you’re consistently working to execute at a high level and you don’t leave that opening for the competition to jump in there and take your client, take your relationships, etc.,” that is much better.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, why don’t we get a little bit practical, tactical, super specific on what’s executing at a high level means. Now that’s going to vary in different roles, different positions. But one thing is responsiveness. You were super quick with me, that made an impression, it’s like, “Wow, very cool.”

I remember, other times, you have known things that other people did not know. And you’ve acquired that knowledge, as far as I can tell, by you show up at the events, the trainings, and you’ve actually read a startlingly large proportion of very long, very boring governmental documents associated with loan-compliancy matters. You’ve actually read the things, and they’re huge.

Justin Humphries
Yeah. So the HUD handbook, which is FHA lending guidelines on loans, I don’t know, it’s north of a thousand pages, but I might’ve scanned that one, for the full disclosure. Scan the sections that are pertinent when needed, right?

But, again, going back to solving problems, the excellence in that commitment, going back to your original question, I think, it depends on the situation, right? So sometimes it is that communication piece of it where, “Hey, I’m getting back within X amount of time.”

Sometimes, I may be able to leverage that knowledge and expertise and guidelines and kind of the get-it-done knowhow is what I call it, right, to do things that others either don’t think they can do, they can’t do, they won’t do it, to just get the loan done.

And that’s the problem that’s solved there, where we had somebody last fall that was denied by three other lenders, I think it was, and she was about to lose this house, called me, within eight calendar days, we had her loan closed. It was just a regular FHA loan.

Any of them could have done it, but they didn’t leverage the expertise and knowledge of FHA guidelines the way that they ought to have. I don’t know if that fully answered your question or not.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, you know, that’s really good. Yes. And I’m thinking now about a physical therapist. I haven’t met him in person, but I’ve watched a lot of his videos, Dr. Aaron Horschig, of the YouTube channel Squat University. His book is called “Rebuilding Milo.”

And so he’s got these videos in which someone says, “An athlete had a shoulder problem. They went to four physical therapists and they weren’t able to fix it. But we fixed it with these two easy exercises.” I was like, “You have my attention.” And, sure enough, like that is an experience I know people have had because our bodies are miraculously wildly complicated.

It’s no surprise that a lot of physical therapists take a crack at a diagnosis and it’s not quite right, not zeroing in on the exact right little tendons or whatever. And yet, a real master of the craft is able to do it. And, holy smokes, it gets referred, like, quick.

This book has 4.9 stars on Amazon with 4,000 reviews. But it seems like the guy is, actually, has that excellence in terms of, “Hey, when this body does this, this is often the thing, so let’s try the thing,” and, holy smokes, that worked and it’s amazing. We tell everybody.

Justin Humphries
Yeah, creativity and persistence is what it boils down to, willing to dig a little bit deeper than others will, go the extra mile, so to speak. It’s a bit of a cliche, but it doesn’t make it wrong. Now we’re able to come up with solutions that others may not have thought of.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally. And sometimes you get it. And it’s so funny, you actually, you get pretty excited about it. Like, sometimes more excited than I care to hear about it. No offense.

Justin Humphries
That’s okay.

Pete Mockaitis
You know I love you. But you’ve probably heard this feedback before. You’re sharing what’s going down with a loan, and you’re kind of excited because, sure enough, you have cracked the code in terms of, “It turns out, what we need to do is just make sure they had a tenant in place in one of their properties so that we could then count that rental income against it. And so that gets us over the debt-to-income threshold, so now it qualifies.”

And so, but that took some extra work and thought and conversation and back and forth and questions with them, as opposed to just looking at the application like, “No income number, not good enough. Pass.”

Justin Humphries
Yeah. I mean, I know we didn’t maybe talk about going this direction, but I’d love to take it this direction if you’re open to it, that’s what’s going to separate, you know, in my field and AI universe. Not just the creativity and the problem-solving because AI is good at it, and we’ll get better better, right?

Creativity and problem-solving are half of it, and the relationships is the other half. And still knowing that this is an incredibly emotional transaction for anybody. Getting a mortgage, buying a house, whether it’s first time, second time, or fifth time, investors are significantly less emotional about it.

But, still, anytime money is on the line and you have a personal stake in it, it just feels heavy, and it’s high-trust position. Some people, some home buyers care less about that and some care much more, but those that are experts with the trickiness, I think, are going to be who’s going to be successful in the long term.

Because I’m looking at this, the average profile of somebody that does what I do is they’re in the mid fifties, they’re a white guy, and I’m a white guy, too. The thing is it’s white guys. But I’m 27, right? So they’re not thinking on a 30-year time scale of this industry more than likely like I am.

I’m sitting here, going. “Hey, is this going to be here in five, ten years?” Certainly, that’s important. I think it’ll be here in some form or another for the next 10-ish years at least. But what does the job look like in 20 years? What does it look like in 25 years? What does it look like in 30 years when you can push button, get mortgage?

You know, it’s simplified a lot since the internet, but it’s not yet at the point where it’s push button, get mortgage, right? You have some regulatory moats around the industry. But regulatory moats often get crossed and don’t last forever.

So, at the same time, as those that can make personal connections and think outside the box, think creatively understand people, in a way that I don’t think AI will ever truly be able to understand a person, are going to be the ones that stay successful for the next 20, 25, 30 years.

And, I mean, that’s a huge piece of how I’m looking to position myself going forward is, “How do I future-proof the business that I rely on, my family relies on?”

Pete Mockaitis
And when you said AI, that got me thinking about just sometimes there’s a rash of AI-generated comments in social media platforms, and I do not care for them.

It’s so unpleasant. But you’ve done this game where you’re solving problems, you’re building relationships with total strangers on social media, in terms of if someone has a situation, and then you really get into it. Like, you spend some time, you write some paragraphs about, like, “Oh, well, in this situation, consider this and this and this. You might want to do blah, blah, blah. Happy to chat.”

And, like, you’ve shown me, like, people are wowed like, “Wow, can we get on a call?” All of a sudden, total stranger on the internet wants to be talking to Justin, and that’s just good for your business.

Justin Humphries
Yeah, I mean, it’s awesome, and that’s something I only recently started doing, the last month, two months, that I’ve never even, I mean, I’ve considered it but I’ve been like, “Eh.” I looked at content, I do some content and stuff here and there, some batched-out stuff, which is awesome.

It’s mainly authority building and it’s not generating any leads, which is unfortunate, but I’m not getting anybody saying, “Hey, I loved your video. Like, can we…?” But when I make a comment on a post that’s particularly insightful, that does drive inbound leads, where it’s responding to a specific concern, “Hey, I had this happen.”

And there might be 60 comments on that post, right? And some of them are, “Hey, I would love to help. Reach out to me. Great.” I mean, so the mindset that I have going into those types of situations on Facebook, Facebook groups, marketing and networking in there, Reddit, whatever it is, is, “How much can I give away for free?”

Like, “How much value can I provide?” I want to provide so much value that, one, the OP, the poster the, of the question-comment, whatever, reaches out to me, ideally. And if they don’t, somebody else sees it, and they’re like, “Wow, that was pretty insightful,” or, “Wow, that’s a good rate,” or, “That’s a good…” whatever, “That’s a good strategy,” and I get inbound leads.

So, I’ve had several that have converted at a surprisingly high rate because you think internet lead and you think, “Okay, call center, 1% conversion, 1-5% if you’re excellent,” and that’s not what I’ve seen at all.

So it’s just a different kind of marketing and different kind of strategy where it’s “How much knowledge do I have and how much of that can I put into words and convey, even if it takes me a few minutes?” As opposed to you have some canned AI posts and comments.

So some will reach out to me and some are, like, the canned AI responses, I’m like, “That’s not even correct.” And I’ve had a couple that were AI-assisted writing when they get longer that I’ve gone back and edited, and that’s worked okay. But I’ve found, when I write it, it does convert higher. So I’m experimenting with some of that.

I don’t know if you, I know you work with Claude some, but I think it is Claude. Yeah, it is Claude Anthropic that now has a Chrome extension. So I’ve utilized Claude to basically read some of the posts in these Facebook groups, and help me respond, but always guiding and further kind of honing that response, if I do that.

We got here by talking about AI, that’s my tie back in, but it’s been particularly interesting. I do recommend, I’m not sponsored, but do recommend the Claude Chrome extension as it can kind of drive for you and post and comment and aid with that and kind of speeding it up.

I’ve noticed if I do it well, cuts my time in about half on doing those, but I’m still spending some good time with them.

Pete Mockaitis
And what does the Claude extension doing exactly?

Justin Humphries
Yeah, so Claude can read the post. So, like, if you’re on Facebook, Claude can read the posts and then you can instruct it, “Hey, read this comment. Type up a response around ABC thing, kind of making these points and clean it up a little bit,” right?

So I’ll guide it, but it’ll read the post, it’ll compose a comment, it will paste the comment in, and it will actually post a comment for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing. And I suppose if you connect that to like a real base of your knowledge inside a Claude project or whatever, I don’t know if you can, but that becomes much more substantial because I think the worst is the AI comments that actually say nothing, like, “Well said, Justin. And trust is such an important ingredient in today’s technological marketplace.” Like, you didn’t say anything at all.

Justin Humphries
You mean the patronizing AI crap, yeah. So, I listened to a keynote a couple months ago on AI, and you may have to bleep this out or not, but he had a good comment that, when you rely on AI for your strategic thinking, which I no longer do as a result largely of listening to this, you’re getting your strategic thinking, your big picture, thousand dollar an hour work or whatever hourly rate you want to assign to that, guiding your business based on what he called the opinions of the masses of asses.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I heard the subject in the study and they realized that, no matter what context you put in for a strategic problem in front of the AI, it just went with what the masses said, even if it’s a completely different context. It wasn’t actually “thinking.”

They used the term trend slop like, “Hey, that is the trend. That’s what a lot of people are saying. It sounds pretty good when you put it together, but you weren’t actually thinking. You were just grabbing words near the other words kind of around the thing.”

Justin Humphries
Well, and you lose your competitive differentiation, too, right? If you outsource your big thinking, your strategic thinking to AI, I mean, you lose a piece of that tactically. And going back to mortgage for a second.

I had a coworker recently that had, he asked me, he goes, “Well, hey, can I do this.” He goes, “Well, ChatGPT told me.” I’m like, “No, it’s just not correct. So he laughed and, well, I laughed because I’m like, “No, no, man. That’s not…” I won’t use his name.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s straight up doesn’t work with the law.

Justin Humphries
I’m like, “That is just not correct.” So now he has a file that’s DOA right now because he relied on ChatGPT to give him loan guideline advice, and this is an originator. Hopefully, he’s not a listener. But, no, I told him, troubleshot for him, and told him what he needed to do and whatever, and that I think is going to be fine.

But, yeah, you don’t want to use your ChatGPT for your strategic thinking, right? I think, inherently, we know this, but we have to retain – I’ll get off my soapbox on this here in a second – but we have to retain that which makes us human, and that which makes us competitive in the marketplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Well said. Well, yeah, that seems to be a real thing – competitive in the marketplace. Like, you solve a real problem. You bring forward revenue. That is publicly known and understood. That is published and it’s quantified and it’s unambiguous.

And, in so doing, you’ve got to put yourself into a power position, as opposed to you are not one of 600 people clicking the easy apply button for a job that they hope you can maybe do, so much as you have said, “Behold, world, it is on a matter of public record that I can do this for you. You want that done? Oh well, then maybe we can talk.”

Justin Humphries
Yeah, that’s right. And that’s been a huge, huge piece when I look strategically at my work. And I look at, “Okay, could I go through this under role that’s maybe a bit easier, maybe a bit less stressful, maybe not as high pressure?”

I look at that and I go, “There’s a trade off there.” When you’re since going from outside sales, outside loan officer relationship to inside me, like say your preferred lender works for a builders lender, whatever that might look like, you have a captive business.

Then you lose that ability to be in that power position in the negotiating table because you don’t own the book. You don’t own the relationships. You don’t own the business channels. So now I know that’s not going to apply to all of your listeners one to one, but I think you’re right on.

Like, when you can quantify your value that essentially, “Hey, you would, otherwise, not have this revenue had I not been with you, and had I not brought this piece of this relationship, this piece of expertise, this experience to bear,” and thinking about those things as you’re on the job hunt is huge.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, Justin, tell us, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Justin Humphries
No, I mean, I think we hit on it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Well, now, could you share your favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Justin Humphries
A favorite quote has to be, and I’m not going to name the Bible verse because I don’t know it off the top my head, but it has to be that God will never give you more than you can handle.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study, or experiment, or bit of research?

Justin Humphries
Yeah, so one of my favorite experiments that, you know, and this is not related to mortgage in the sense whatsoever, but has been Universe 25. So, I think, it’s ‘68 to ‘73, some experimenters at the National Institute of Mental Health kind of created a mice utopia, mouse utopia, where they didn’t have any lack of food, water, or anything, so it was this perfect world. No suffering. No issues whatsoever.

So it, eventually, happened. And I’m really summarizing here, which is okay. They all went crazy and they died out. And so the lesson that I take from that is, because they had no predators, they had all abundance of food and water, everything they could need, all the space they would need, is that in the universe and in the natural world, suffering, in a sense, is universal. And not only is it universal, it’s necessary.

So that would be mine that I’ve actually applied that to my business, too, going, “Okay, I’m going to endure the suffering of whatever it is, the thing I don’t want to do, the activity that is maybe the most profitable, yet the most unpleasant activity that I could do that day. I’m going to endure that.

Pete Mockaitis
Like this podcast you’re enduring it

Justin Humphries
And that’s, yeah, a hundred percent. Like, the podcast. I’m going to endure that activity so I can have success in my business, but also because I know that in the long term, it makes me a better person. That’s an interesting experiment.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Justin Humphries
Yeah, favorite book, I’d say The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I mean, it’s huge. I love the concept of continuous improvement and sharpening the saw from that book. It’s kind of guided a lot of my personal and professional life, of just continually doing better.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Justin Humphries
You know, it’s really simple and it strikes me as rather basic just to say it, but just having an alarm that wakes up at the same time every day, regardless of the day, you know, Monday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I found that, I mean, it’s a cornerstone.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that is a bit of a mantra or slogan that you roll with?

Justin Humphries
It’s funny because I think about this, and one of the key mantras I find myself saying is something my dad told me when I was about five years old, I was on a football field. And as I dissected, I think about it and I’m like, “Hmm, this may not be a good thing.”

But it is the idea that if you start something, you finish it. And so whatever that looks like. Now, maybe that means that in business, you start something and you iterate, and you iterate, and you iterate, or you make the decision to stop if it doesn’t work.

But this idea of always taking the start of the journey to its completion, whatever completion that may be, I think, is huge. Just that persistence, as something I mentioned earlier, persistence. And if you start something, you finish it. It sticks with me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Justin Humphries
Yeah, so they can always, my cellphone, being a mortgage lender, is always open and public knowledge. So cellphone is the best way. Call, text, 615-438-8125. I do have a website, JustinHumphries.org. I’m sure that’ll be in the show notes as well. And an email address that I’m sure Pete will throw in the show notes. So feel free to get in touch with me at any time, all things mortgage, or any other items.

Pete Mockaitis
And can you actually say the email address?

Justin Humphries
Yes, the email address is jhumphries@loanDepot.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Justin Humphries
Just everything that we’ve talked about today. When you’re on the job search, putting yourself in the driver’s seat, creating and continually maybe keeping a record of those quantifiable moments in your job career as they happen.

So if that’s, “Hey, I improved this by ABC amount.” So kind of create and track a record so that as needed, you can draw upon that, put it on paper for the job search. I would challenge everybody to have that running record.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Justin, thank you.

Justin Humphries
Yeah, thanks, Pete. Great to be on here. Great chatting with you today.