The Power of Consistency: How High Performers Maintain Success Through Market Changes and Life Challenges

In this insightful episode of The Nathan Newberry Show, Alec Hanson, Chief Marketing Officer at loanDepot, shares his journey from commission-based sales to leading marketing strategies for a major mortgage company. Through personal stories of success, failure, health challenges, and transformation, Alec reveals the principles that have guided his high-performance career and life—with consistency emerging as the ultimate superpower.

Redefining High Performance: The Consistency Factor

For Alec Hansen, high performance isn't about short-term achievements or occasional wins—it's about sustaining success over time:

"My view now of high performance really falls back onto the ability for an individual to be consistent. There's greatness in sprinting and accomplishing a goal from A to B, but being able to put that together year over year, month over month, and just stay in the pocket regardless of the market, regardless of the things in your life that change... that's what I think a high performer really is."

This perspective didn't come overnight. As Alec describes, it developed through years of experience and maturity. Now in what he calls his "middle-aged" years, he recognizes that while many can achieve temporary success, the truly exceptional performers are those who maintain their standards and output despite changing circumstances.

The foundation for this consistency mindset began early. Alec recalls a pivotal third-grade moment when his mother told him, "Alec, you're not a C student, you're an A student." This simple statement did more than address a grade—it imprinted an identity that would shape his future approach to challenges:

"What she gave me, the gift she gave me, was she started to imprint identity on me. And over time, that identity started to become what I believed I am. And that's a powerful motivating reality for a lot of high performers—what they internally believe they are."

This identity formation would later be challenged in junior high when he made the basketball team but didn't play. Rather than accepting this reality, Alec's response foreshadowed his future approach to obstacles:

"I went and shot hoops every single day. I went, I shot, I shot every single day. I went at recess and lunch, I was shooting hoops. I was a sweaty kid in junior high—how embarrassing is that?"

Building Relationships: The Foundation of Sales Success

After college, Alec jumped into a 100% commission sales job at age 23. Despite his lack of experience, he quickly established himself through an approach built on consistency and outworking everyone around him. On his first day at a new office, he arrived at 8:15 am per company policy, only to discover most salespeople arriving around 10:00 am and leaving by 3:30 pm.

"I looked right then and I was like, 'I'm going to crush everybody here. They're not even working full days.' And I ended up getting number one in the nation for rookie at every mortgage company out there. I outworked people even when I didn't know anything."

But Alec's approach to sales went beyond mere hours worked. He developed a relationship-focused strategy to overcome his fear of rejection. Rather than cold-calling real estate agents, which triggered his anxiety, he:

1. Showed up consistently at their open houses and broker previews
2. Introduced himself without asking for anything
3. Maintained these interactions over time (7-8 per month) until he became a familiar face
4. Let relationships develop organically before discussing business

"I didn't attack it, but if you had an open house and I was going after you, you better be damn ready because I'm showing up. I was there every time, every networking event. Every time I got a chance to find it and get in front of you, I was in front of you. I was stalking these people, but I wasn't harassing them. I wasn't selling them. I wasn't pitching them."

This approach helped him bypass the traditional cold-calling rejection cycle that plagues many in sales. Instead of facing outright "no's," he built relationships first, making the eventual business conversations more natural and effective.

The Blending of Sales and Marketing in Today's Digital Landscape

As Alec's career evolved from sales to becoming a CMO, he gained unique insights into how these traditionally separate business functions are converging:

"I think sales and marketing are blending and almost impossible to tell you where the delineation is for a lot of organizations now. Great marketing makes the sale irrelevant. I don't need to convince you anymore."

This perspective informs how Alec approaches both corporate marketing initiatives and training individual salespeople. At loanDepot, he balances global brand strategy with localized approaches, recognizing that customers want to be served in different ways—some prefer a digital-only experience, while others want face-to-face accountability.

For individual salespeople navigating this evolving landscape, Alec emphasizes that social media presence isn't optional:

"If you want to leverage this [social media], I think everybody now finally would just nod their head and say, 'You're right, I have to have a strategy.' It's not a 'if' or 'you,' it's a 'one.' You have to be obsessed and do it. There's no other way around it now."

However, he simplifies what can feel overwhelming by focusing on one core principle:

"Where everyone gets super caught up, it's like, 'Well, what do I say? What do I do?' I just come back to one core value, which is: can you be helpful? People realize really quickly to be helpful, they have a limited amount of stuff to talk about, and they're living it every day."

Rather than posting about luxury cars or bragging about closing speeds, Alec advises salespeople to create content that helps solve customer problems. This approach cuts through social media noise while establishing authentic expertise.

Overcoming Personal Challenges: Health, Fitness, and High Performance

Alec's professional journey has run parallel to significant personal health challenges. He recently underwent his second hip replacement surgery, having had both hips replaced at a relatively young age. This experience, along with the three years of debilitating pain he endured before surgery, taught him valuable lessons about resilience and the connection between physical health and professional performance:

"Another core belief I have is your personal health and fitness absolutely impacts your ability to perform at high levels in any profession. I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but they definitely compound and help. There's huge synergies between somebody who takes care of their body and their health and then can perform at high levels for longer periods of time in a profession, and in family, and all that stuff."

When his hip problems began affecting his ability to be active with his children, Alec knew he needed to make a change. After surgery, he faced the challenge of reclaiming his health and fitness. His approach revealed the same consistency mindset that had driven his professional success:

"When I wanted to reclaim some of my health, I was like, 'You know what, I know what I need to do. I'm just going to do 100 days of working out every day,' which I defined as sweat every day."

Combined with a clean diet of mostly meat and vegetables, this 100-day commitment led to remarkable results:

"In 100 days, I lost 55 pounds and reclaimed some of that health and fitness."

To ensure accountability, Alec added a crucial element—public commitment:

"The other hack that worked for me was everything was public. I posted every day about how I was doing. I posted my weight, I posted how much I had gained or lost the day before, every single day, and I posted what I was doing."

This public accountability forced him to maintain his commitment even through social events, holidays, and business networking—situations that typically derail fitness goals. His fear of public failure became motivational fuel.

Conclusion: Hard Work and Consistency Beat Everything

When asked about his core principles, Alec distilled his philosophy to one fundamental belief:

"Hard consistency beats everything all the time, every time. I don't care how talented you are, how smart you are, how good you are, how fast you pick things up—I will beat your ass because I will just work harder and longer than you will, and you will not win."

He illustrates this principle with a story about his father, a professional tennis player who wasn't physically imposing but won through sheer tenacity:

"My dad's mentality was, 'I might lose, but I'm going to lose so ugly. I'm going to make you earn every point that after playing me, you're going to be too tired to win the next game.' He would just run down every ball. 'I'm going to play—if we, I'll be here three hours with you, baby, let's go.'"

This dedication to showing up consistently, regardless of circumstances, is what Alec identifies as his superpower. It's a mindset that has served him through sales challenges, marketing transitions, health issues, and career evolution.

For aspiring high performers, the message is clear: consistency isn't just a nice-to-have quality—it's the essential foundation upon which lasting success is built. While talent, strategy, and innovation all matter, it's the ability to maintain standards and effort through changing markets and life circumstances that ultimately separates the truly successful from the merely talented.

As Alec puts it:

"Just keep showing up."

For more insights from Alec Hansen, you can find him across major social platforms including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. As he notes, "If somebody can't find a salesperson or entrepreneur within seconds of Googling that person, that person's failing."