Written by: Christine Beckwith

Texans are fond of saying everything coming from Texas is big. Dixie Sanders is the epitome of the opposite. Physically, she is a petit woman, delicate in appearance and chock-full of southern charm. Her personality, on the other hand, is the size of Texas itself and she is without exception going to shoot straight with you.

Dixie Sanders is a professional with swagger. Since she started her professional story in our field, she has focused on mastering and assessing, accumulating knowledge and experience to build her originations team to where it is today.

Dixie is the type of person who leaves an impression. When our paths crossed, I knew of her by reputation from having been affiliated with another coaching firm. She let me know right away the reason she sought out our firm was to learn more. Unexpectedly and to my delight, I found myself having a conversation with a woman I could have easily talked with for hours. She and I are cut from similar cloth. We enjoy laughing and engaging with people while also stepping back and observing, continually seeking more knowledge and broader experience.

Dixie, even after having achieved what many might call the height of success, continues to be on a mission in life; she knows what she wants, and she knows she wants to be aligned with people who push her. People who are excellent, like Dixie, want to find greater excellence. People like Dixie are ramped in our field and like the pro athlete who needs to hone her skill, Dixie knows iron sharpens iron.

Even though our first conversation was short, it was impactful and gave rise to a new partnership. Her insertion into our company world has been a blessing of many measures. As a coach with 20/20 Vision for Success Coaching (VSC), Dixie shares her excellent experience and sets the bar for other professionals in our firm who want to learn how she has achieved success. Dixie’s strength is her accountability. What impresses me the most is how she consistently puts in the work. She shows up every day to work on her business and herself while continuing to seek knowledge from others to improve what she offers.
She is a professional who garners the highest respect in our industry. Those who know her history, acknowledge the long path taken to where she is today and do not doubt she has earned and deserved every accolade and accomplishment along the way.

Everyone has a ‘how I started’ story. Dixie laughs about how she landed her first job in Austin, Texas, explaining it was one of those serendipity moments. Dixie started in 1983 working at a bank in the mortgage department as a receptionist and assistant in upstate New York. The company hired a new manager who had recently moved from Austin. Shortly after, Dixie’s husband was transferred to Austin. The manager was kind enough to reach out to her connections, and Dixie was employed within a week of moving to Austin.

With no choice but to find her own footing in a new job and in a new place, Dixie was, as she says in her Texan terms, “…thrown right into the frying pan to learn.”

Dixie says she fell in love with the mortgage business in those early days, spawning a professional love affair time and experience has only strengthened and deepened. In 1988, Dixie chose to move closer to family and relocated to DC only to return to Texas in 1990, choosing Houston where she continued to lay the tracks of her road toward mortgage originations, finding a job in operations and learning the business of processing, closing, and post-closing until moving into sales as a loan originator in 1993.

TIPS FROM A WISE PRO

Today, Dixie is an icon in our industry. She has built a thriving business, and she runs it with integrity while producing incredible results. She is a vast and experienced database marketer. Under the direction of her seasoned leadership, both clients and her team thrive. Her clients are loyal and her relationships are deep. She is seen by others as a guidance counselor for their businesses.

When I sat down with Dixie to interview her for this cover story, I asked her to share her top three tips for origination sales. In her words, this is a roadmap anyone can follow:

“Knowledge: Seek it! I have been coaching for nearly 20 years. I believe in learning and continuously evolving. Develop the mindset of a pro athlete and work on your special skills to keep them sharp.”

“Integrity: Operate from an honest and principle-based place! It matters and people know the difference.”

“Passion: Work with Passion. There’s nobody who can accuse me of being less than passionate. You have to bring it every day and mix in a lot of passion. This is what drives you. This is what is attractive to people all around you.”

When asked to share her top three marketing tips, she gave these:

“Work with people you like! There are so many people we can choose to have in our referral base network; choose the ones you like. It will make your job easy and enjoyable.”

“Be in relationships. Sales is about bonding. Treat each transaction like a relationship you are developing.”

“Talk their language and add value. Listen and hear the language your client speaks and speak to them the way they want and need to be spoken to, based on their directive. Make sure when you are speaking, you are adding value.”

COACHING AS A CORE ACTIVITY

Being a coach and being coached are core principles for Dixie when it comes to business and life. “Having someone on the outside looking in is critical,” she says. “Most of the time we cannot see the forest through the trees and that is what a coach will do for you. Accountability pushes us to a new level. I have been coached since 2003.”

For more than a decade, Dixie took part in Rick Ruby’s The CORE program, both as a coach and being coached. She believes in coaching because it works, describing her own results saying, “I learned from coaching to work smarter and develop the skills to make that happen. I learned to use tools that allow me to watch the numbers, both in business and at home. Maybe the most important lesson I learned from coaching is how to build and maintain a team.”

FROM THE CATSKILLS TO THE LOW HILLS OF AUSTIN

Dixie grew up in upstate New York. Typical of her dry sense of humor, she describes this as, “kind of ironic since my birth name is Dixie.” Her dad was a fifth-grade teacher and her mom babysat the teachers’ kids. Her parents both had incredibly strong work ethic, which she obviously inherited.

Dixie acknowledges growing up and attending classes in the same school where her dad taught was not the best situation, saying, “Trust me. I did not want to get in trouble at school.” The town where she grew up was a farm community. In 1983, she married a high school sweetheart and the world she knew disappeared. Regrettably, the relationship would dissolve in 1990. It was then, Dixie moved to Houston, TX where she met Tracy Sanders who became her husband of 28 years and counting.

When I asked Dixie how she met her life-long partner she said, “I had a bad back and had just moved to Texas. As I was driving to work, the radio came on saying if you need a doctor call 1 800 doctor finder. Since I needed a chiropractor, I decided to call. I was given a choice between two different doctors. One was in his 50s and one in his 30s, so I went younger. I went to the appointment and I met my husband. A few weeks after my appointment I called and asked him out. From that time forward the rest is history.

Early in our marriage, he was in another industry. He has always been my biggest cheerleader and supporter. Tracy is a kind soul and he eventually joined the mortgage business with me. Now we work together. He is the manager of our Sugar Land Mortgage Branch. He adds great value to our branch with his mentorship.

I never had children. Tracy had two daughters, and we decided we did not want them to feel replaced. The grandchildren they have given us have brought us great joy during this time in our lives.”

IN HER OWN WORDS

As Dixie reviewed this article prior to its publication, it sparked memories and a fresh understanding of the significance moving to Texas has had in her life. We love what flamed from the spark and share it with you here, as she remembers it.

“Did life offer me adversity or opportunity? Or maybe a better question is, can adversity create opportunity? To be living today in one of the fastest growing counties in Texas was unimaginable when I was child growing up in a town of less than 5,000 people. My hometown had a four-way stop, no traffic lights. We had one small grocery store, one pharmacy, one bank, and one gas station. Only one of each and all on a small scale. My clothes were sewn by mother. Jeans were not an option. I was a girl and I dressed like a girl. I was the teacher’s kid and one of the few who was excited to go back to school, but the last paycheck my dad received in June was pretty much spent when the time for new school clothes came around.

August was always the month of casseroles. Mom had to work hard to stretch the budget. My least favorite was tuna noodle; think about a bag of noodles, a can each of tuna and cream of mushroom soup, and voila, you have a meal for five.

To graduate with a class of less than 100 people and be the lucky one God moved from a poverty-stricken area to the growing, thriving community of Sugar Land, TX where I am today, is still amazing to me. I look at my first marriage as part of God’s plan. Neither of us would have the opportunities we have been given had we not married and taken the leap of faith to move to Texas, sight unseen. Obviously, we grew as individuals by leaving our small town and moving to the big city.

The mortgage business in Austin was quite different than where I started in Upstate New York. My move to Texas brought so much to myself and to my parents. Until then, none of us had ever flown on an airplane. I’m grateful for having made it possible for my parents to enjoy spending the winters with us, away from the cold.

My grandmother was a role model for me, even before I understood what that phrase meant. My sweet husband affectionally calls me by her name, Aileen, when I become hardheaded or cheap. She lived to be 101.5 years old so, look out, World! I have a lot left in me. Her husband, my grandfather who was known as PA to me, lost his eyesight in his early 30s. My grandparents had to figure out how to provide for their family, given the challenges of my grandfather’s blindness. My grandmother could save five pennies if you gave her one. She overcame incredible odds to provide for her family. I am proud to be affectionally called Aileen by my husband.

After her passing, I moved my mom, an only child, to Texas. She packed up her life, putting it into 102 boxes all by herself. I flew to NY and we watched the truck being loaded together. We said a few goodbyes and boarded a plane to Texas where she pretty much unpacked all 102 boxes by herself. At the age of 79, she left her life of 50 plus years in the same community to start fresh. She learned to Uber, joined community activities, and joined a church.

I see myself in both my parents and grandmother today more than ever, and I wonder again, does life offer adversity or opportunity?

Real adversity is not being able to change or control circumstances. One of the hardest moments in my life was receiving the phone call about my nephew, telling me about his motorcycle accident. He would have been 30 in three weeks and did not make it to that milestone birthday. That my friend, is adversity. No going back, no rerun, no last chance, just done. As hard as it was for me, I can’t imagine what my brother endured in losing a son, I admire my brother’s strength to go forward from devastation.

I am known for telling my employees, don’t come to me with a complaint or problem without offering a solution. Complaining does not do anything. Frustration for me comes from not being able to execute solutions.

Early in my career, a boss told me, “There is little in the mortgage business that cannot be fixed. Action with mistakes is better than no action.”
I think he may have regretted the statement when, a few days later, a dear friend and colleague told him we backed into the pole in the garage with the company car. He was right, though. We took action and it was fixed.

I left being an operations manager for a high producing loan officer in 1993 in Houston to go into sales. I opened a branch in Sugar Land for Countrywide Home Loans and created my own world and my own book of business. I took nothing from him, none of his referral sources, just a few well-learned lessons of what to do and what not to do. That was the start of my origination business.

I love to grow individuals in this business because of what it has given me. I have hired many young people, giving them their first job, and had the opportunity to help them learn the business I love. It’s always special to watch them go on to create their own business. It is also disappointing when they leave, but they must grow. The only regret I have is for any who might have missed the lesson on how to create your own world: Do not take from those who help you.

The best advice I can give is to make your own way. Do not go after the referral sources or anything else belonging to the people who helped you. I guess there’s a piece of human nature in play here covered by the Golden Rule, but I stand proud. I did not take from my mentors and I have a thriving business.”

LEADING THE PACK

Today Dixie operates and originates a branch doing tens of millions of dollars in originations monthly. She is far atop her mountain range, still abiding by the same set of rules for herself to maintain this excellence. Proudly partnered with Homebridge, she wakes daily to serve her partnerships, to lead her team, and to perform with the same work ethic her parents taught her.

She coaches others and works on her own business with me and other coaches here at 20/20 VSC. She has served and continues to serve with the same advice she gives mortgage professionals seeking knowledge, with integrity and with passion.

As far as hobbies go, she loves to travel and to hang out at her lake house. Spending time with her grandchildren is a priority and it brings her and her husband great personal joy.

She loves to shop and loves watching great television, and of late she’s hooked on Yellowstone. She dedicates time and money to veterans charities and takes part in an annual charity for Child Advocates of Fort Bend.

During the time we have spent with Dixie, she has risen out of the pack and is a clear standout. Her voice is strong, her quips hilarious, and her swagger ever so appealing. The room lights up when Dixie walks into it.

On a personal note, I am grateful for our paths crossing. She is one of my favorites among the people I have been working with in recent years. I gain as much from her as I hope we give to her. She is now an embedded part of our community, and I see a future where Dixie is a director of our Women With Vision division helping us spread our word of success and hope for generations to come.

We will continue to stoke the fire burning inside of Dixie Sanders and watch the beautiful ever blooming story unfold. We look forward to walking down this road together. We have, in fact, dived into the deep end with Dixie and love the fantastic journey we are all on.

To connect and follow Dixie please email her or call her at: dixie@homebridge.com Cell is (281) 222-9209

Velocity. Speed. Acceleration. These words mean the same thing, right? Not entirely so. Most people, when asked to define velocity, usually come back with speed, which is partly true. Velocity is related to speed. A constant velocity is described as traveling in a straight line at the same speed.

An example of speed might be driving, measured by miles per hour (mph). Velocity incorporates speed and adds in distance. The speed of a car can be described as driving 65 miles per hour. The velocity of the car adds in the direction: the car is moving 65 mph in a southwest direction. Distance over time is velocity.

The key to understanding how this relates to your career or business lies in how the change of direction impacts velocity. A constant velocity travels in a straight line. Career velocity requires acceleration to build to success. After all, a career always staying on the same, level track is stuck in a rut, don’t you think? Acceleration happens to velocity when the movement changes direction.

What direction is your career headed and how fast is it going? Do you wait for life to happen to you, or do you take an active part and plan where you want to go? Admittedly, neither choice is wrong. One is, however, more desirable, and more likely to result in accelerated velocity in one’s career. Perhaps this is a more telling question: is your career velocity on a track you desire?

In physics, velocity is defined as speed with direction. Your career development can be looked at in the same way. When it comes to sparking a productive and effective career velocity, direction is more important than speed. Think for a moment about the burst of refinance work eclipsing the mortgage world in the wake of Covid-19 and the Fed’s action to drop interest rates. During this time, speed is the only focus. As a result, career velocity for many, both in and out of the refi side of mortgage, has slowed. Oh, everyone is busy, busy, busy. However, busy does not equate to being productive.

In today’s mortgage world, the opportunities for success are high. The direction of our careers and their speed, our career velocities, can be influenced and controlled once we understand the interaction of direction and speed. This is where planning comes into play.

Planning begins by looking at the current situation, and, here come more questions to ask yourself:

• What direction is your career headed and how fast is it going?
• Is your career headed in the direction you want?
• How pleased are you with how fast your career is developing?

Make sure you know where you want to go with your career. Visualize the growth you want and put it into your business plan! Yes, you must have a plan. A career built on luck is just as likely to implode as explode. A career built on a plan is highly likely to develop consistently following a path of accelerated velocity. Your plan will provide the steps needed to guide you along the path and the tools to measure and redirect your efforts to ensure success.

Here are a few strategies to keep in mind as you create your career velocity plan:

1. Be a Strategic Thinker and Act on Those Strategies. This matters simply because the work you do matters to you and to your organization. Incorporate company goals and objectives into your own in strategic ways to ensure optimum velocity acceleration building on the efforts of the whole team.
2. Learn, Learn, Learn. Say yes to opportunities to observe others in action and add takeaways fitting your plan into your work habits.
3. Be Present and Focused. Being present ensures you engage effectively with clients and coworkers. Being focused ensures you are following the plan!
4. Manage Your Time. For many, this is the number one challenge and the one aspect we are not likely to control effectively. Understand that you DO have choices when it comes to time. Think of time as money because time is money. Once spent, you cannot recover it, so spend it wisely and learn to manage it! Mastering this one strategy can provide a huge jump in velocity acceleration.

Your career will be, at best, exactly what you have today unless you choose to take action to move outside your current work process and consciously change direction. Nobody can control all change in life. External forces will impact any plan. Seek out opportunities to take charge of what you can control.

Speed is the easy part of this equation when it comes to career. The few possibilities listed below could speed up a career:

• Changing jobs or fields within the industry
• Becoming certified or trained
• Accomplishing major goals at work
• Adding responsibilities

Your career might move at the speed you want, but is the velocity the direction you want? How does velocity change your possibilities? The possibilities above are generic and without direction, they can simply happen or not. By defining the possibility and connecting a goal and the steps to achieve the goal to the possibility, you apply direction and change speed into velocity. Instead of being on track to make vice president, take the steps to do what you can to make it happen. If your goal is to close $1 million this year, identify how you will accomplish it. Will you take on new partners? Will you move to another company? Will you become a vice president or manager? Fill in your own tasks and attach real goals to them. Then step into your newly defined career velocity and accelerate toward your goal!

20/20 Vision For Success Coaching

The words 20/20 Vision for Success are not in the name of this company by accident. Coaching is about building a foundation for results and knowing how to step into action based on that foundation. Turning vision into reality requires trust that the bedrock beneath the vision is sound. Coaching with 20/20 Vision begins by building and strengthening your foundation and ensures that, as coaching progresses, you and the 20/20 team behind you remain focused on the vision for success.

20/20 Vision for Success Coaching opened several private coaching webinars to the public. Register for one or all!

Celebrity Coaching:

REGISTER September 10, 2020 

Nicholas Eremita, GRIT: When It Matters Most

Coaching Spotlight: 

REGISTER September 8, 2020, 1 pm eastern

Chasity Graff, Leveraging Social for Mortgage Money

Women With Vision Webinar:

REGISTER September 8, 2020, 11 am eastern

Leora Ruzin, Leading with Love: Is It Possible?

 Info September 25.

Coming to you in full Virtual mode… FUSE 2020. Check out their event page for details.

  Info 

MBA has transitioned their fall events to a virtual platform, including the Annual Convention and Expo scheduled for October 19-21, 2020. Click Info for details.

Books are a big part of our world here at WWV Mag. And we love it when readers want to share their take on a book. Enjoy this review of a classic book that is as relevant today as ever. -Editor

An Executive Summary Written by Ray Befus

Clear Boundaries: Every Business Woman’s Essential Safety Guide was born out of the shared experiences of Beckwith and co-author Jessica Peterson. Both are women professionals who have for many years traveled across the country for business. Sadly, both have firsthand knowledge of how dangerous it can be for a woman. In this book, the authors draw from their own experiences and call upon experts to present real, actionable, and practical advice to prepare anyone to avoid and survive what could be a dangerous scenario.