Dominion Lending Centres recently put its second National Sales Conference in the books. More than 350 attended the event in New Orleans, including over 20 sponsors and 40+ exhibitors.

Among the keynote speakers were best-selling authors Darren Hardy and Scott Stratten. Each left mortgage broker attendees with inspiring ideas to reinforce their businesses.

Here’s a quick rundown of the takeaways…

Darren Hardy — 21^st Century Leadership

Key messages:

• Social and relational aptitude have become essential in business, far more so than financial and technical skills.
• You can no longer be a boss or manager. You now must be a leader who models the behaviour you desire in your team. (i.e. leadership by example.)
• Your personal leadership ability is the only thing that will prevent you from realizing your aspirations.
• Focus on what you can do for the people you lead instead of what they can do for you — and they’ll do most anything for you.
• In the end, your success is dependent on other people’s success.

Scott Stratten – Social media expert & author

Key messages:

• Marketing is about spreading the word. The key is getting other people to spread it for you.
• If you want word of mouth, do worthy things.
• Twitter is one example of a social outlet that can build trust. But Twitter is a conversation, not a dictation. If all you tweet about is mortgage rates, that’s all you are.
• Be authentic and react immediately when people reach out to you on social media.
• Reaching the third circle of influence (people who know people who know people who know you) means your message has gone viral. It only gets this far if it’s amazing information that people (who don’t know you) feel is worthy of being shared.

Darren Hardy – The Compound Effect

Key messages:

• Willpower doesn’t work but “whypower” (the reasons “why” we want to succeed) does.
• When your ‘why’ is powerful enough, you can overcome more than you can imagine.
• Adversity is your advantage. Your past has developed muscles not wounds.
• Success requires relentless consistency. If you want to have more, you have to consistently do more.
• For every goal, identify things you must do to achieve that goal, things that you don’t want to do (the difficult, scary stuff). Commit to spending 80% of your time doing these difficult things.

More on the Conference

DLC hosted 17 Learning Centre sessions covering everything from business building and client management to private lending and insurer offerings.

DLC agents earned seven CAAMP CE credits, while owner/managers attending the leadership meeting earned eight.

All that education was balanced with a healthy dose of fun. On opening night, attendees networked and celebrated late into the night at DLC’s Bayou-themed Welcome Party. Then on evening #2 came DLC’s Blue, White & Gold Masquerade Party. Photos of these events can be found on DLC’s conference Facebook page.

DLC’s next conference is coming home to Canada in beautiful Whistler, B.C. – September 16-20, 2015. www.dominionlendingevents.ca will have more details in months to come.