A Niche Is a Sign, Not a Fence

Every loan officer has heard the advice. Pick a niche. Get known for one thing. And every loan officer has had the same thought right after: if I tell people I do one thing, they will stop calling me for everything else.

Brady Thomas had that thought too. Then he did it anyway, and his production went from $124 million to $179 million in one year. He is a Branch Manager at LaSalle Mortgage in Oakland, he came on The Way this week to walk through the system he calls referral gravity, and the line he dropped in the middle of it is the one I want to sit with.

What does a niche actually do?

It tells people when to think of you.

That is all. It is not a list of loans you refuse to do. It is not a wall around your business. It is a sign on the door that says: when this specific thing happens, call here.

Brady’s sign says buy before you sell. He calls it the Two Home Tango, the dance of buying a home when you still own the one you live in. Every agent in the East Bay knows that when a client needs to buy first, Brady is the call.

Here is the part people miss. About 75% of the time, those clients close on a regular Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan. The Two Home Tango is not a loan program. It is a door. Once the client walks through it, Brady does everything.

Why are we so afraid of the sign?

Because we picture the fence.

We imagine an agent with a first-time buyer thinking, well, Brady only does the buy-before-sell thing, so I will call somebody else. Brady says that is not what happens, and he has the closings to prove it.

What happens is simpler. You do a great job on the deal in your lane. The agent sees what you are capable of. Now you have earned the right to ask for the rest.

Here is how he said it on the show:

What about the deals outside your lane?

Brady asks a question most of us avoid. The deals outside your lane that you are scared of losing, do you even want those?

If you are very good with self-employed borrowers, do you want to go compete on a loan type you do not enjoy and do not do better than anyone else? For most of us, the honest answer is no. We just do not like saying it out loud.

The fence was never the niche. The fence was the fear.

Why does the sign get you more calls, not fewer?

Because agents do not refer people. They refer problems.

Think about how a referral actually happens. A client walks into an agent’s office with a situation. The agent reaches for a name attached to that situation. If your name is attached to nothing, you do not get the call. You are just one more person who is good at everything, and everybody is good at everything.

Brady tested this from 3,000 miles away. In 2020 his wife took a job in Boston. His business stayed in Oakland. No coffees, no open houses, no drop-ins. The sign kept working because the sign did not need him in the room.

How do you put up your own sign?

Pick one problem. Not a product. A situation a client gets stuck in.

Then say it after a win. The best moment is right after a closing, when the agent is already grateful. Thank you for getting this closed on time, they say. If you ever have a client who needs to buy before they sell, you say, that is what we do better than anybody. Call us.

That is it. One sentence. Brady’s whole system started with it.

Where to go next

The sign is the first move in a longer system. The rest of it, the authority that makes agents trust you before they need you and the operations that let you deliver every time, is in the free playbook.

 The complete system, all eight moves, is in Referral Gravity. 

Who can we serve today?

By Dino Katsiametis, Founder & CEO, Ethos Lending · Host, The Way Podcast

Based on a conversation with Brady Thomas, Branch Manager at LaSalle Mortgage, on The Way with Dino Katsiametis. Views expressed are the individual’s own and do not represent their employer.

Ethos Lending, Inc. · NMLS #1533336 · Equal Housing Lender