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MortgagePoint » Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 48 November 2024 E X P E R T I N S I G H T S As I got to watch this cycle thing up close, I started to understand that there's a certain tidal nature to the economy. If you're not sensitive and aware of your sur- roundings, there's so much that you miss. I was fortunate enough to be sensitive to these happenings in the world and put to- gether the fact that they weren't happen- ing in a vacuum. They were happening in the context of a broader world. Q: What role has mentorship played in your life? I never really worked for any of the people who were mentors to me as an employer or employee, but I had to work hard to learn what I needed to learn. I like to be open and share all I can with every- body I can because most people don't do anything with what you tell them anyway. Other people don't behave that way, they hoard information and don't think that they should share information because they're afraid of what somebody else might do with it. I'm not sure that any of that works that way. You have to use good sense, and certain things should not be public knowledge, but you shouldn't hoard information just because you're afraid somebody might learn something. I like to tell people what I'm doing and what I'm thinking because I want to know if I'm crazy. One of the ways that you learn is by talking about things that you might do and seeing how people react to them. "Yeah, I think that's a good idea," or "Boy, that's silly. Why would you do that?" You need to create a dialogue that allows for a give-and-take, and you can't get a give-and-take dialogue by tak- ing and not giving. If you're not prepared to share information, you're probably not going to receive information. Q: Throughout your career, what have you learned about hiring and recognizing the potential for good leadership? My biggest problem when I opened my business, and I was in business for a year, was that I didn't have any five-year guys. Nobody saw the world the way I saw the world, and I didn't have everybody pulling the boat in the same direction I wanted to go, so, we weren't very efficient in our energy expenditure. After being in business for five years, my biggest prob- lem was not having any 10-year guys. And my biggest problem at the end of 10 years was, I didn't have any 15-year guys. So, I was interested in building longevity and getting people aligned with my per- spective, and that's very difficult to do. I wasn't as interested in the thor- oughbred as I was in the plow horse. I wanted somebody who was going to work their tail off and learn with me, not drag me along, but push along with me. I think that's kind of something that comes with being a founder, where you need to create a culture that's one of loyalty, dedication, and determination. Those were the traits I was looking for when I first started. We had built this culture where it was us against the world. We were going to do extraordinary things in different ways that made us special. There were no nonbanks [at the time]. There were big banks, and there were savings and loans, but we were talking about institutional places that were predominant rather than independent small businesses that were growing. We were growing and having a lot of success, but we were insular. We thought we saw the world differently. What made us special was that we didn't act or behave like a bank. We didn't be- have like a super-corporation that came into the mortgage business as a spinoff of a larger business like GM, Ford, or GE Capital. One large company after the next came into mortgage finance for a variety of reasons, where it was just a sideline. On the other hand, we were scratching and clawing and making our way along every day. I had to hire people with a different pedigree. As we gained more capital, more money, more success, and more liquid- ity, we were able to do different things. I was able to hire people with different talents, and then we slowly added talent to meet specific needs. So, we went from cultural hires—people who could be of the same ilk and see things the same way—to people that came from different [backgrounds] that brought additional skills. Then, we started hiring specific skill sets, to enhance the quality of the business, and then we morphed into just hiring smarter people with better educations and bigger resumes and more experience. Q: Any final thoughts about what you hope people take away from the book? Well, the book was originally intend- ed to share ideas about cycles and how you can create a certain level of predict- ability. But one of the things I think is important to come from the book is that arrogance has no place in business. You need to be sensitive and aware of not only your surroundings and your environment but of the people in those surroundings. You have to know that you have a respon- sibility to your stakeholders, whether they're your customers, your employees, your partners, or your associates, and your job is to grow with them. The way that that happens is you take responsibili- ty for what goes wrong, not blaming them for what goes wrong. You can't be arrogant, you can't be bureaucratic and expect to be success- ful. The more that you do, the greater success that you can have, and the more responsibility you take for your actions, the more success that you'll have and the more serious you'll be about managing the outcome. If you don't take responsibil- ity, you're going to look for somebody to blame. And it's not about whose fault it is; it's about did you get where you're going? You're only going to get there if you're smart enough to know that you need people and that you need to help them achieve their goals as well as yours.