SELLEST OSAST
You did the hard part. You built the relationship, you cast the vision, and you got the yes. Then the machine takes over. Licensing, systems, paperwork, and the weeks start going by. By the time your new producer is cleared to start, the fire's gone out, and sometimes they walk before day one. And even when they make it in the door, 29% of loan officers who transition end up moving again within 90 days. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. The space between the yes and the start is where a lot of leaders quietly lose people, and by the end of this episode you'll know how to protect it. I call it protecting the gap, and there are five moves to it.
Episode Breakdown
[00:01:25] The Cornhole Tournament
A leader I coach hired a loan officer and refused to let that new hire start out quietly. He threw a first annual cornhole tournament built around the loan officer, and roughly 150 real estate agents showed up. When he told me about it afterward, the thing he kept coming back to was the momentum. They had so much momentum in the marketplace from that one event, and his new producer started with visibility and a room full of relationships instead of an empty pipeline and a lot of second-guessing. The energy you promise while you're recruiting has to show up during the transition, and the leaders who keep people are the ones who plan that energy before the start date ever arrives.
[00:02:14] Move 1: Name the Gap Out Loud and Put It on Paper
The moment someone says yes, tell them the truth about what's coming, how long onboarding takes, what happens each week, and what to expect. I'd go one step earlier than that. For years I did what most leaders do, send someone to corporate for a visit, make an offer, and only after they said yes would we start talking about onboarding. When I moved that conversation up to the local site visit, decisions sped up, because the fear of a hard transition got handled before it ever turned into an objection. People don't move toward abstract ideas. If you tell someone your transitions are amazing, that means nothing to them. The moment you hand them a checklist and say can I walk you through exactly what happens from day one to day 90, it becomes something they can see. A good onboarding document does two jobs at once. The big-picture person gets a confident top-line view of the process, and the detail person gets to see exactly what's going to be done on each day. People always move toward certainty and clarity, and that page gives them both. I'd also put William Bridges' book Managing Transitions in the right-hand drawer of every leader I coach. Every new hire walks into a transition zone the day they sign, new systems, new people, new tools, and a new culture all at once, and the leaders who've studied how people move through that zone lose far fewer of them.
[00:03:40] Move 2: Keep Delivering Value in the Gap
Most leaders go quiet after the yes because the selling feels done, and that silence is exactly when second thoughts move in. Stay present. Keep sending something useful, keep checking in with a reason, and keep them feeling chosen all the way to the start line.
[00:03:59] Move 3: Build Momentum and Put a Person on the Transition
Give your new producer something to be part of before they officially start, a launch, an event, introductions to the team, and a plan for their first 30 days. Then give them a human being. When I was leading, a transition processor would come into my office during the site visit and introduce herself. She'd say if you were to join the team, I'd be the one handling your transition, and then she'd lay out everything. It felt organic, and what she was showing the recruit was that we had them. I also had a transition loan officer who served as the concierge for every new hire's first 90 days, and I paid that person somewhere between 50 and 75 basis points of the new hire's production. That was the best investment I could make, because nobody missed a step that could cost them a loan while they were learning our systems.
[00:04:50] Move 4: Keep Transferring Belief
Onboarding usually gets treated as a checklist, and the checklist matters, but the bigger work between the yes and the start is reminding them why they made a great decision. Talk about the vision, the future, and the reason they said yes to begin with. Tasks get them set up, and belief is what keeps them. Just make sure you educate before you motivate. Education plus motivation plus application is what equals transformation. If all I do is fire someone up and never walk them through how the numbers work, they hit their first tough month, look at their pro forma, and say that's not what was sold to me. Belief built on a clear picture holds up when the first hard month shows up.
[00:05:35] Move 5: Be the Steady Voice
Time kills deals, and a long onboarding is a long stretch of time. During it, their current company may make a counteroffer, a friend may plant a doubt, and fear may get loud at the kitchen table. Your job is to be the calm, consistent anchor through all of it, the leader who doesn't waver while everything else does. And keep your promises lined up with what you can deliver. Expectations without agreements are toxic. If you sold a dream in recruiting that your day-to-day leadership can't back up, it shows up in the first 90 days, and by then the producer's already half out the door.
[00:06:14] Why It Works
That 29% has a partner. 68% of loan officers who transition say one year in that they're not sure they made the right move. When I look at those two numbers, I see onboarding, all of it. Excitement has a half-life. The energy a recruit feels the day they say yes starts fading the moment nothing happens, and silence during a long gap doesn't read as neutral to them, it reads like buyer's remorse setting in. Momentum and value reset that clock. Every touch, every bit of belief, and every piece of forward motion tells them they made the right call, and the leader who builds a great first 90 days is still collecting on it five years later. There's one more payoff most leaders miss. Anytime someone was in transition with me, they were my best recruiter. I had a first conversation with a branch manager named Tammy on a Friday afternoon, and I walked away thinking she wasn't going anywhere, she was cold. So I connected her with Tiffany, who was about 90 days into her move to our team, and Tiffany told her the first 90 days had felt like a vacation. Not long after, I got a text asking if we could get together Monday, because Tammy was highly interested in taking next steps. I hadn't done a thing to warm her up. A new hire who feels carried through the gap will recruit for you while that energy's still fresh, usually for about the first six months.
[00:07:41] Your Small Win Today
If you've got someone sitting between yes and day one right now, pull up their name before you close the laptop today and write down one useful thing you could send them this week. If nobody's in the gap at the moment, do it for the next person who will be, because they're coming. That one note is often the difference between a new hire who feels remembered and one who starts wondering if they made a mistake.
[00:08:05] Three Bigger Moves This Week
Map out the onboarding timeline you'll walk every new hire through, week by week, and put it on a single page, so the wait feels like a plan and your whole team knows what's coming. Build one moment of momentum for someone before their start date, an introduction, an event, or a first-month plan, so they spend the gap feeling like part of something. Then set a simple check-in rhythm for anyone between yes and start, so no strong recruit goes cold while the paperwork catches up.
Key Takeaways
The yes isn't the finish line. The space between the yes and the start is where a lot of leaders quietly lose people.
29% of transitioning loan officers move again within 90 days, and 68% say a year in they're not sure they made the right move. That's onboarding.
Don't tell them your transitions are amazing. Hand them a one-page day-one-to-day-90 checklist, because people move toward certainty and clarity.
Silence after the yes doesn't read as neutral. It reads like buyer's remorse setting in.
Put a real person on the transition. A concierge for the first 90 days is worth 50 to 75 basis points because nobody misses a step.
Educate before you motivate. Education plus motivation plus application equals transformation, and belief built on a clear picture survives the first hard month.
The producer in transition is your best recruiter. Carried through the gap, they'll bring people to you for about the first six months.
If you keep losing strong recruits somewhere between the yes and the start, reach out. Visit bookrichardnow.com and grab time on my calendar, and I'd be glad to think it through with you. And if you'd rather build this kind of thing in real time, I host a biweekly working lunch where we do exactly that together. The next one's 10/9 at 12 M ET. You can add it, plus all of our other 4C live events, straight to your calendar here: http://cal.ae/suuaiiw
