"Those two immediately catapults you to an expert level of status"
Positioning yourself as an expert in your field doesn’t happen overnight. That holds true for Shashank Shekhar, who built his career brick by brick, one blog after another, until he established InstaMortgage (formerly known as Arcus Mortgage).
Shekhar is also known for his best-selling books, My First Home and Out Front, and is widely regarded as “America’s Premier Mortgage Expert.” MPA caught up with Shekar to uncover the secret behind his success.
Watch here: What does it take to be a member of the $150 million club?
“I remember reading a book called The Sales Bible. I think the author was Jeffrey Gitomer and one of the things that he mentioned in this book is that if you want to be seen as an expert, you need to either read or write. You need to either speak or write because those two immediately catapults you to an expert level of status - because you’re writing about something people automatically think you must know what you’re writing for. Similarly, if you’re on the stage talking about something, then they must believe that you must be really good at something.”
Shekhar took that to heart and started working on a blog early in 2009. Even though he has no background in writing, he consistently wrote one blog post every week.
“Nothing happened,” he said. “I think it was after six straight months that I got my first phone call and somebody said ‘hey, I read your blog on the web like I was searching for something and found your blog’. I almost fell off the chair, like somebody actually read this thing that I’ve been writing for six months and then, I think a month later, I got an email from a realtor saying that they were Googling and found my blog. And so one thing led to the other.”
Shekhar shares more of his story and tips for mortgage professionals who want to follow in his footsteps in this MPA TV interview, which you can watch here for free.
