What does it take to go from being a top producer to a generational one? Most Loan Officers believe the gap between $50 million and $100 million—or $150 million and $250 million—is bridged by working harder, grinding longer hours, or getting lucky with rates.
But winning at the highest level isn’t magic. It’s mechanics.
On this episode of the Mortgage Rainmaker Podcast, I sat down with my long-time friend and fierce competitor, Oleg Tkach. Oleg is pacing to close $250 million this year. But the most impressive number isn’t the volume; it’s the time clock. He is running this massive operation while working roughly 30 hours a week.
If you feel like you’ve hit a ceiling, it’s not because you lack talent. It’s likely because you lack the systems to support the growth you desire. In this post, we’re breaking down the exact loan officer marketing strategies and operational mindsets Oleg used to build a machine that wins in any market.
What does it mean to scale your mortgage business?
To many, “scaling” implies chaos, more fires to put out and less time for yourself. For Oleg, scaling required the exact opposite: extreme discipline and clarity. He calls this state “being locked in.”
Scaling your mortgage business starts with emotional health and personal discipline. You cannot lead a high-capacity team if you are running on empty. Oleg asks himself a simple guiding question: “I am at my best when…”
For him, the answer involves getting high-quality sleep, eating clean, limiting alcohol, and constantly consuming leadership content. If you aren’t personally locked in, your business strategy won’t matter.
But beyond the personal routine, scaling requires running a specific “play.” It’s about executing a strategy that doesn’t rely on market tailwinds. A tough market is the ultimate truth teller; it exposes whether your strategy is real or just fluff. If you are struggling right now, the market is telling you that your current play isn’t working. To scale, you must find a strategy that generates energy and excitement, even on the days you don’t feel like showing up.
Why are loan officer marketing strategies so important?
There is a hard truth that Oleg dropped during our conversation: Your income is capped by the size of your audience.
Many Loan Officers are taught to go “deep” with relationships. While deep relationships are valuable, they are not scalable if your audience is limited to 20 people. If you want to dominate your market, you must shift your mindset from being a “friend” to being a “valuable marketer.”
In the modern landscape, loan officer marketing strategies must focus on audience expansion. The LOs winning the biggest market share aren’t necessarily the ones with the most best friends; they are the ones with the largest audience who view them as the authority.
This requires confidence in sales. You have to be willing to market to people you aren’t trying to be best friends with. When you treat your outreach as a professional marketing function rather than a social hour, you unlock the ability to reach hundreds of agents rather than just a handful.
3 Ways to Scale Your Mortgage Business
Oleg shared his roadmap for having your “best year ever” in 2026. If you want to replicate his growth curve, focus on these three pillars:
1. Build a Team for Capacity
You cannot scale if you are the bottleneck. Your capacity determines your ceiling, not your desire. You must build a team that allows you to input more loans without the system breaking. If you are afraid to hire, you are choosing to stay small.
2. Acquisition: Tell One New Person Every Day
This is the simplest, most effective metric for growth. You must have one meeting or meaningful conversation with a new agent every single day. Over the course of a year, that is 200+ new potential partners entering your ecosystem.
3. Retention: Never Let Them Forget You
Once they know you, you must have a system to keep them. This is where many LOs fail—they hunt for new business but neglect the gold mine they already found. Whether it’s through email marketing, social media, or AI for mortgage loan officers to automate touchpoints, you must remain top-of-mind.
4 Tips for your loan officer marketing strategy
Oleg’s approach to marketing is tactical and highly leveraged. Here are four tips you can implement immediately:
- The “Retention Call” Leverage: You (the LO) should focus on acquisition calls—winning new business. However, your team (LP1s or assistants) should handle retention calls. Oleg’s team members each make 5 calls a day to existing agents just to check in. With a team of six, that’s 150 calls a week happening without Oleg picking up the phone.
- The “Just Out of Curiosity” Script: When talking to an agent, ask: “Just out of curiosity, do you ever work with self-employed borrowers who write off too much income?” When they say yes, you introduce your solution (e.g., bank statement loans). This is an easy transition from small talk to business.
- Sell the Solution, Not the Rate: Agents don’t care about your rates as much as they care about their commission. When you convert rate shoppers, you do it by solving a problem. Oleg markets specific scenarios: the 10-day close, the saved deal, the payment shock solution.
- Share Success Stories: When Oleg helped an agent save a dead deal that resulted in a $52,000 commission, he didn’t just high-five the team. He called every other agent in his database to tell that story. Success stories are your best marketing asset.
The “Agent Programming” Method: A New Approach to Referrals
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this episode is the concept of “Agent Programming.”
Oleg operates with an Account Executive mindset. He realizes that agents don’t wake up wanting to hang out with a Loan Officer; they wake up wanting to solve problems.
Programming is the art of teaching agents exactly when to think of you. You want to wire their brain so that when a specific trigger happens, your face pops into their mind.
What to Program For:
- The Weekend Ghost: “When your current lender doesn’t pick up on Saturday night, call me.”
- The Turn-Down: “When another bank says no to a self-employed borrower, call me.”
- The Payment Shock: “When a buyer loves the house but hates the monthly payment, call me.”
If you don’t program them, you are just another billboard on a busy highway. When you program them effectively, you become the only solution they trust.
Building Capacity: How to Structure Your Team for $250M Volume
Oleg is pacing $250M while working 30 hours a week. How? Leverage.
Most LOs are capped because they insist on doing everything. They believe the client needs them for every update, or the agent needs them for every status call. Oleg has engineered a team where the capacity is built into the system.
He focuses his time strictly on high-value activities:
- Strategy and Vision.
- New Agent Acquisition.
- High-level problem solving.
Everything else…processing, updates, retention calls, marketing execution, is delegated to a team that is empowered to execute. If you want to scale your mortgage business, you have to stop asking “How can I do more?” and start asking “Who can do this for me?”
Let’s Go, Rainmakers
Scaling from $150M to $250M isn’t about luck. It’s about clarity, discipline, and the courage to build a machine that works without your constant manual effort.
Whether you are looking to break your first $50M or your first $200M, the principles remain the same: Program your agents, build your capacity, and treat your marketing like a professional operation.
If you’re ready to get locked in and run a play that actually works, listen to the full episode with Oleg Tkach.
Are you ready to make it rain? Let’s do this!
Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.
