Persistence and Drive: Kevin Kosisky's Inspiring Path in Mortgage Lending

In this episode of the Above and Beyond Podcast, join us for an inspiring conversation with Kevin Kosisky, more commonly known as KK. With over three decades in the mortgage industry, Kevin's story is one of perseverance, adaptability, and relentless passion for helping others. Starting at the age of 23, Kevin made his mark at Academy Mortgage leading a top-performing team and currently co-owns his firm, Mortgage Tree Lending. Beyond his professional successes, Kevin shares personal anecdotes from his journey, including the importance of answering the phone, his family's inspiring history, and the lessons learned from his father. He also delves into his ventures in the restaurant business with the Hub and his involvement in the unique golf shirt brand, St. Canary. Kevin's drive, motivation, and humor make this an episode you won't want to miss. Listen in for insights on business, balance, and pushing through challenges.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Tell you what, the number one reason I was successful in the beginning is because I answer my phone and I call people back. And if I didn't know the answer, I just say I don't know, I'll find out.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hey there, welcome back to Above and Beyond where Excellence meets elevation. I'm your host, Jan Simon, and this season we're raising the bar, diving into the passion, purpose, and defining moments of leaders who don't just aim high, they live there. Big ideas, real stories. Let's get into it. Today's guest has spent over three decades helping people unlock the dream of home ownership, and he's still loving every minute of it. At just 23 years old, he jumped into the mortgage world and never looked back. From leading a team of 150 at Academy Mortgage, where his branch closed more purchase loans than 240 other branches nationwide, to co-owning his own firm, Mortgage Tree Lending. His story is one of persistence, adaptability, and passion for people. A proud NAU grad, devoted husband of 30 years, father of four, and proud grandpa to two, he brings heart and humor to everything he does. Whether it's helping first-time buyers, guiding seasoned investors, or dominating the pickleball court, get ready for a conversation about business, balance, and the drive to keep going, even after doing this way too long. Please welcome to the Above and Beyond Podcast, Kevin Kaziski.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Hey, how you doing, young? Good, how are you? That was great. Were you an English major?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

I I have a very good relationship with ChatGPT.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Well, I said I sent you the bio, and then man, you spiced that up.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

That's tough.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

It sounds so much cooler.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Like do this, do that, make it sound like this. Oh, wait, change that over there. And uh so so better known as KK. Yes, yeah, everybody knows. Everybody knows it's KK. So so Kevin, you and I have known each other.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

2008?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Yeah, it's gotta be 20 years almost.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

20 plus, yeah, maybe oh five. So I have a house next to uh a friend of yours, right? Yep. My neighbor. Yep. And I have a basketball court, half court.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

And every Saturday at what seven o'clock?

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Seven, six, whatever, seven o'clock. I don't know what time.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

Seven o'clock, we would play. And like for five, six years. And I gotta tell you, Jan, you by far were the biggest hustler out there. Jan never quit. He he grabbed every rebound. He couldn't shoot worth nothing.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

I can't, but I can't play. I can run. You were like Dennis Rodman, man.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

You were the guy that just he hustled and made everybody better. And my favorite story, though, is gotta be you got a rebound, and you're running full speed, and you dove, grabbed the ball, saved it, and then went headfirst into my bushes, which were pretty big, and your feet were sticking out, and you couldn't get out of the bushes. And we we all were laughing so hard because we wanted to help you, but we were laughing too hard, and so eventually we like pulled you out, but you were literally stuck in the bushes.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

I remember that vividly, and I think I probably got a couple scratches. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

But that just shows the intensity you have, and and I know you apply that to your work too. We appreciate that. And uh, you know, that that's one thing that people don't have is is drive. A lot of people just don't, you know. When you were on that court, you know, you were friendly, you were nice, but hey, when it when it came to uh game time, you turned it on and and you dominated and and no a lot of respect for you. We had so many good times.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

I had I had a blast. I I loved it. And in fact, I've got to now come over. I think you've now morphed it into a pickleball. So you become an old man court. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

I switched it so we we still have basketball there, but I I put the pickleball court in at the last minute. I redid my surface. Okay, and at the last minute, you know, someone's like, you know, you should put pickleball on it. Uh, we'll try it. And I did it, best thing ever in my life, or worst. We'll see. But um, no, I've taught at least 20 people to play. No kidding.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Do you get Margaret out there with you?

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Yeah, my wife goes and plays, I got her out there. I've taught Marcus, I've taught people that are better than me now. Really? Uh, but yeah, there's it it's so much fun, and everybody's like, oh, pickleball's for old people, it's for this, it's for that. But the young generation is coming up, and it is it's so much fun, it's competitive, yeah, and it's not a lot of running.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

What's what's crazy is so when I was in college '92, I guess. I was my degree was fitness and sport management. And I wanted to go on to do physical therapy, but you gotta do all the pre-rect stuff. One of the classes I had to take just to get through a major was basically an elective class, but it was instruction of racket sports. And this new thing called pickleball was kind of so that was coming out in 92.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Yeah, in 92.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

And so we had to learn basically all the rules to pickleball, how to play it. And there was this guy, and I think his name was Darius. I can't remember that's what sticks in my head, but he was a wide receiver on the football team, and he and I, I mean, we would go at it. Like we were so competitive. When you talk about the basketball court, it was the same thing on the pickleball court, and I not that I know how to play, but it was like smash, smash.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

Well, that's the thing. If you've never played before, you can pick it up like very easily. If you can hit you know, tennis, racquetball, baseball, basket, anything where you know you're a little bit coordinated, everybody picks it up. The rules at first you think are stupid, but then as you play, you realize why they have them. But yeah, but yeah, it's it's so much fun. And and that's crazy. You were playing back then. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Why did I get you out there? So I definitely need to come play. I've got a friend in uh he's got a place in Palm Desert, and last year we went to the uh I can't even think of the name of it now at the top of my head, but basically the the national tournament in Palm Desert. We went and watched that for a while, and then we played. And when he and I play, because he his place is in a you know, retirement park, so like all these 80-year-old women, but they're the best ones. Like you're like trying to take it easy and they're just smashing it hard on you.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Oh yeah, they don't even move, right? No, they know where to play. It's all about placement, it's so technical, and uh, you can be at athletic and and and get by, but if you if you're not experienced, yeah, they'll figure you out.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

My my my problem is I always want to hit it hard, yeah, and that's not what it's about. You know, it's like it's can't smash it.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Yeah, you're called a banger. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

We don't like oh, he's a banger. We'll just we'll level him up. Get him backcourt, backcourt, backcourt, backcourt. Uh so let's let's go back to your childhood. Okay. Let's talk about let's talk about baby KK. You grew up in Arizona.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

No, actually, I was born in Maryland. Oh, okay. So I was born in this in 70, and um my parents were full-on hippies, you know. So no kidding. Yeah, yeah. So they had me at 19. I can't see your dad as a hippie. Oh, my dad was total hippie. Was he? Yeah, back in the day. Yeah, long hair. I actually have a a picture that I took. They didn't realize it while I saw it in our photo album, where they were passing around a joint in 1960.

SPEAKER_05 6:49

That is awesome.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Hopefully that doesn't get them in trouble. I mean, it's sure the statute's a little bit. But um, but yeah, so they, you know, full-on hippie. We're in Maryland. It's very cold and dreary there. And so when I was six, we moved to Arizona. Okay. We had some uncles here. We came out, we ended up living with them for a while till we got a place and just loved it. And he went from hippie, you know, protesting things to very conservative.

SPEAKER_05 7:17

So he's as you were saying, I can't imagine him. He loved it. Yeah, it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

But he never lost his uh his love for the weed. I there's a story where he loved us playing outside, and we had this big yard. You know, back then, in 1979, he he built a custom home.

SPEAKER_04 7:32

Really?

SPEAKER_02 7:33

And uh had a big backyard, all the neighbors would come and play, and you know, he had roses, he had a green thumb, but we'd mess up the roses and everything. He wouldn't care. We're out there playing. One time he came up to me, he goes, Hey, did you did you break the tomato plant? I'm like, Oh, sorry, Dad. I I didn't mean to. And he's like, Yeah, don't touch the tomato plant. It's kind of in the corner, soccer ball must have hit it, whatever. And so I realized years later, there was never tomatoes.

SPEAKER_05 7:58

It was definitely weird. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

I still like, don't touch the tomato plant. Yeah, so uh, so I I you know grew up, I went to uh I actually went to Catholic school, okay. Went to Christ the King from like fifth to eighth grade, and you know, I good kid, people got in trouble for chewing gum back then. Then I went to Posting Junior High and uh yeah, they're listening to you know Motley Crew, yeah, satanic music.

SPEAKER_05 8:27

They they warned us about that.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

That's cool. Hey, I got in trouble for bringing a Def Leopard and Rush cassette home. My dad's like, we will not have that devil music in this house.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

Well, looking back, it was, but come on, yeah, that's what all the kids were supposed to do. So yeah, they they we walked to school and then they're watching bad things on TV. It was like it was such a uh such a wake-up call, you know, from getting in trouble. But but yeah, no, I um love love growing up here. It was a great experience. Went to Mountain View, okay. Uh wrestled for a while until I I blew out my collarbone, and then um I actually met Doug Hopkins. You had Doug on here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So Doug and I went to Mountain View together. I'm a year older than him, but we got our start selling cable door to door. No kidding. So back before it was Cox, it was dimension. So we'd go door to door in very rough areas, you know. We got assaulted many times. And we were 19, right? Yeah, we're selling cable in the summer at 122 degrees one time.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

That's brutal. It was brutal. If you can do that, you can pretty much do anything. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

I think that was our boot camp, but but we loved it, you know. We we'd work for two or three hours, and every sale was $52 was back in the you know, late what 90, 91. That was a fortune.

SPEAKER_04 9:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

So we would sell two or three a night, make 150, and then we could, you know, party afterwards, yeah. And then wake up and play uh water volleyball all day.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

That's what we did. I can't see Doug playing water volleyball. He would it's so funny.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

He told me he wrestled for a while, and I'm like Yeah, no, he was he was actually really good. So one time we go to this party, so we played every day, and he got really good. A lot of it's timing, you know. He he was quite well, he was heavy set. I don't want to upset him, but he was, and so we go to this party. Wait, was okay, sorry, Doug? He's actually put on some more from the front. You don't look that heavy, but he that he could jump and he was athletic. So we go to this party and we walk in and they're playing, and they're like, one guy goes, Well, we don't want the fat guy. Oh he goes, Oh, really? So he got on the other team and he just destroyed them. He was so pissed. Yeah, he could jump, he could slam, it was just it's all hand-eye. But yeah, we we played that, and so we we parleyed that from selling door to door. I went into mortgages, so I I got in in uh '93 after NAU.

SPEAKER_04 10:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

And um, great story. So my dad sold solar units back then, back when they weren't scammers. And I'm gonna say that right now. I uh look, solar's great, we're in Arizona, but these companies, I'm telling you, yeah, from what I see on my end, a lot of them are just are just criminal. That's too bad. Anyway, back then it was just to heat your your water heater. That was it. It wasn't for energy.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Or the pool, then they have the water ones that went up on the roof.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Exactly. So that's what his was on the roof. So they um he sold it to uh guy named Gene Lines. Gene Lines gave me my start when I graduated from college. I went to work for him because he knew my dad, and then from there I was making quite a bit of money when I first started. So in 1990, 94, 93, 93, February of 93, rates went from 9.5%. There was no one that had a rate lower than 9.5%. Think about that.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Now again, everybody and now everybody's like, oh my god. I know at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

I do that too. Same time the average house was 70 grand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the payment shock wasn't as big, but so rates dropped to seven and a half. And so I did streamlined refinances for two years and just killed it. I mean, everybody, I just back then, you know, you had to go in the office. Now it's all email, digital, but back then they had to bring their W-2s, bring in everything, make copies, and I would have five, six appointments a day every day. Just boom, boom. It was shooting fish in a barrel for a while, you know, because yeah, you're gonna save $200 a month, which was huge back then. And so we refinanced everybody, and that's how I got my start. That's how I learned, you know, okay, this is how it works, and what you need to qualify. And from there, I went to a couple other coup companies and and uh was actually an underwriter too. So I underwrote, did sales, did all that. So yeah, a lot of it was it was a great journey. And Doug, the day he started, so he saw me making all this money, right? He decided he's gonna be an LO. The day he started, rates went back up to 99. That's a true story. It was like February of like 95. Rates went up. He started, he didn't close, he closed one loan in four months. Oh wow. But he met this couple that needed an assistant for real estate. And because he was doing loans and you're trying to uh attract realtors, he started there and they they had him as an assistant, and then he just blew up. That's all you know.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Yeah, you heard his yeah, I'm sure. Oh yeah, well, I mean, and and he's such a good guy. I mean, really huge heart, and yeah, I mean, very successful, obviously.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Extremely successful, and you never guess it. You know, he's so down to earth, and uh he doesn't have the you know the fancy cars and and and the clothes and all that, but no, he he dominated in the fact you know he just got his new house. Yeah, which is beautiful. Oh my gosh. Have you been there? Yeah, oh yeah, you were there for the yeah, for every yeah, for the games. Yeah, he's beautiful, beautiful, amazing. Almost killed him though. Five years it took. Really? They I don't know if he got into it, but they uh uh every everything that could go wrong went wrong on that house, and and it was a struggle, but he's in, and and as you saw, it turned out looking out at the sunset on that.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

I haven't seen the sunset yet. I I need to go back in the evening so we can catch the sunset because he was talking about that. I'm like, I can only imagine with the pool back there. I mean it's it is a it is a beautiful home.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

It is, it is, and I'm so glad because there was a few times where he was cash he was done, you know, and just and uh it was supposed to be uh a year and a half and it took five full years because of COVID.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Did your didn't your parents live out in that area someplace? They do, they still do, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

They live at Brown and Chrisman.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Okay, so they're kind of close out there.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Yeah, they build a custom home themselves just out in the middle of the desert, and it's awesome because there's these multimillion dollar houses and there's trailers. It's like you do whatever you want out there. You got uh well water, and but it's it's beautiful. It's right by uh what's that park there over by the salt river? Usury usury park, yes. Okay so they're just you can walk to usury park, nice, and then it's close to his cabin in Payson.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Yeah, and I think I was there one time you and invited me after my divorce, I think you felt sorry for me or something.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

No, for the for uh the Christmas Eve. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they've been doing Christmas Eve 45 years now. No kidding. Yes, wow. So we they have between 80 and 120 people go there.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

I remember it was a pretty big deal, yeah. It was.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

We had Jerry and Kisa come before, and friends and family come. He's he's got two stories, he's got the fire pit out, five acres. That's awesome out there. Yeah, yeah. You have to come this time. Yeah. And I'm not even feeling sorry for you. No, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 15:32

It'll be just because, you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Yeah, I appreciate that. Um so through school, you know, obviously Maryland, which I didn't realize. I actually thought you were a native Arizona. But so through school, you wrestled. Did you play any other sports other than while you're gonna be able to do that?

SPEAKER_02 15:47

Yeah, no, I played I played soccer when I started out, okay, and and they that's when they first started club soccer. This was like gosh, 77. Okay. Where the the clubs just are Apex, Apex uh Soccer Club. And it was some guys from uh from England that helped start it, and it was great. That that was before there was any club teams, it was just kind of like YMCA.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Well, I joked that there was no such thing as soccer when I was in school because I don't remember soccer ever being around.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Well, that's crazy. It wasn't in Maryland, right? So I come out here and I like to run and I was skinny and and I did really well, and then everybody hit puberty before me. I went from the fastest guy to I mean, these guys got mustaches. I I'm half their size. So yeah, I uh did soccer, uh wrestled, you know, I yeah, just like you. I try tried everything, you know, in intramurals and in college. I I love that. Played racquetball, was pretty decent at racquetball. That helped me at pick ball for sure. For sure. So I was okay at pretty much most sports. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Was there anybody in that time period, let's say up through graduating high school, that that you know, either kept you on the right path, gave you advice to move you forward, or or were you falling in the tank?

SPEAKER_02 17:00

Oh no, I I I gotta tell you, I it's my dad. My dad is truly amazing. You've met him. You play he play he still plays basketball, by the way. Really? Twice a week. No kidding. 75 years old. He's out there.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

He is like so. There was this guy, you you mentioned racquetball. There was this guy, Dick O'Brien, when I was in high school, who was a racquetball player. And I got into racquetball pretty big in high school, just like on a weekend thing. But he was one of those guys that literally didn't move on the court. And that's how your dad is playing basketball. It's like he didn't have to move. It's like speed him and he'll do the hook. Oh, you did that.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

He'll just do the hook. Yeah. No, he he's still out there. I still play with him. I try to play with him once or twice a month. He goes twice a week. He's out there with these old guys, and you can't leave them open. They make everything, they don't move quick, but they make everything. But yeah, it's good. He's he's still out there playing, but I'll tell you the story. So when I he my dad was a salesman, he traveling salesman, he worked for Olympic Stain, which is a paint company, and he would his territory was like all of Arizona, and he would take me out of school at six years old, drive me up to like Prescott, and then we'd go meet with the with the owner of the paint store, and I'd be sitting there, you know, he'd have me sit in the back and he'd talk to the guy, and you know, he didn't talk about paint at all. He talked to him about me, the kids, his kids. He saw his you know, kids' pictures on it. And after an hour, you know, we'd leave, and I said, Dad, you're gonna get in trouble. You're your boss, if your boss saw you, you didn't talk about paint. He goes, Kevin, he owns a paint store. I I there's nothing I'm gonna tell him about paint. It's all about building that trust and that confidence. Yep. I go, he goes, Did he sign the contract? I go, Yeah, he did. He goes, Yeah, that's what it's about. It's about establishing and knowing that I'm gonna be there for him and the paint's gonna be there and everything's gonna be, you know. So for me, I actually did a um a thesis in college said it's not about the paint.

SPEAKER_04 18:51

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

And yeah, got an A on it. And basically, it was all about the fact that sales isn't about, you know, Olympic stain, it was the best stain or whatever. It's about, hey, how are you? What are you doing? I'm gonna show you that I'm gonna be here for you. And if you need anything, I'm here. You know about paint. Yeah, he knew the paint store owner knows more than my dad. Yeah, he's just telling them, you know, the check in the boxes. So that was what that was crazy to me because I was like, oh my gosh, if my dad's boss here talking about me, not talking about paint, dad, you're supposed to talk about paint.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

How cool is that though? I mean, I I don't know if your dad and you have ever had conversations about that, but writing a thesis about that, yeah. I mean, from from a from a dad perspective, I could just think, hey, I did something, did something right. Like, you know, crowning moment type thing.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

It it was great. I mean, my dad taught me a lot of things. I'll tell you this other story too, but yeah, he you know, he instilled in that, and I'll tell you because when I went to public school and when I was around a lot of people, they were doing lots of drugs, you know, back in the 80s. Yeah, uh, that was a big thing, and I stayed away from all that, and I just you gotta just keep focused. But but there was a time he took me up to uh lunch that one of the uh gosh, I think it was Payson, and they had a special, you know, Jack and Coke for two dollars, right? So we're at lunch, he's gonna have a drink, but a regular Coke was three dollars. So he looked at the waitress, he says, you know what, give me two Jack and Cokes and uh hold the Jack for him. So, you know, to she's like, we can't do that, sir. He's like, All right, tell you what, get me two Jack and Cokes, do a side of Jack and a Coke, and then we'll do it that way. Because it's principal, right? Because it's all about the principal. And she would not do it. And so he goes, get the manager over. So the manager comes and goes, let me tell you what we want to do. I'm not paying $3 for a Coke, and I gotta I'm paying two for a Jack and Coke. So figure this out.

SPEAKER_05 20:40

He goes, No, sir, they got in a big argument and he kicked them out, kicked my That's awesome. He's like, There's no way I'm paying more. Now, again, this is a long time ago, guys. I was like, There's no way you paid $2 for a jack back then.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, but that's that's awesome. No, it's like it's like, wait a second, uh obviously alcohol is where you're making your money, and I'm paying less.

SPEAKER_05 21:00

Less. It was some sort of happy hour special, and he's like, all right, just give the side, he's not gonna drink it.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Right, right. I'll drink it. Right, yeah, no, just put the extra in mine so we're good for it.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

He tried it ten different ways, they would not do it. But my dad was very much about principles, and and he taught me that. And of course, my mom, I you've met Nancy, she's just a sweet, like, she's an angel, she's nice, my dad's crazy, and then it all worked.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

That's awesome. That's awesome. You have brothers and sisters?

SPEAKER_02 21:28

I do, I do. I have a brother and sister. I'm the oldest, so brother's two years younger, and my sister's eight years younger. Oh, wow, okay. Yeah, they're they live, um, one lives in uh Michigan, and the other one is like in Wisconsin.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Oh, okay. Interesting choices of the Yeah, well they that's where their jobs took us. Oh, okay. I was saying I would not be choosing one of those two, but you know, you know Marcus, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Yeah, yeah. I think you played with Scott. Do you remember Scott? Scott. I probably did. He wore the sunglasses, yeah. So he played ball with So he's the one that married my sister. Oh used to play they lived here for a while before they moved. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Okay. Yeah.

unknown 22:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

I think I yeah, I think I did. I mean I I'm totally remember Marcus for sure. And I'm pretty sure I remember Scott. So after high school, you went to NAU, try to become a hippie yourself. No, no.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

I was not a tree hugger. Tree huggers business. Back in my day. No, I went up there, joined a fraternity. I had I really had a great time up there. It was a great way to grow up and and you know figure out the system. I worked, I worked through high you know through college, uh, met my wife there at Walmart. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

That was back when Walmart was cool.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

I was saying, did they have Walmarts back then?

SPEAKER_02 22:40

They just opened one in 1989. When we first came into town, it's on the left. And in Flagstaff, it was it was cool. Like everybody was so excited it was there.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Just step up from Kmart. Oh, way step up.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

Yeah, they had everything there. But but it was it was kind of a cool place to go to back then. And they kind of had pride in it, and every morning they do the Walmart cheer. They do give me a W, an A, an L, you know, and you do the symbols, and I saw her, you know, in between you do the squiggly. I saw her do the squiggly.

SPEAKER_05 23:08

And you're like, whoa! Yeah, yeah. And I asked her up. I did, I did. And it's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

It worked.

SPEAKER_05 23:13

It worked.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

So that's awesome. I invited her to a dorm party. So I lived in the dorms up there in Tinsley. And uh so all my friends came. There was like 20 of us. There's beers up there, we're drinking. Two of my friends got in a fight. The RA comes, the residence is and kicks everybody out. Now it's late, it's 10:30. I figure she's not coming, right? So I'm in my boxers. It's all male dorm back then. I'm in my boxers eating top ramen with a pan and a big spoon, watching Saturday Night Live, right? There's beer cans everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

I think I live that same life.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

And my wife comes in with her best friend, all dolled up, and she looks at me like, is this the party?

SPEAKER_05 23:51

Because it looked like I drank 40 beers and watched and eating top ramen with a spoon.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

So I covered up real quick. I'm like, ah, I'm sorry. I really there was a party here, I promise. Everybody got kicked out. She's like, Oh, okay. And her friend's like, let's get out of here. So they left. But she still went after out with me after that.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

So yeah, it all worked out. Nice. And the rest was history.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

The rest's history. Three boys, and then we adopted our niece when she was 13, and now we have two grandkids. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

So yes, yes. Very good. Um what was your degree in college? Heard you finish? I did finish. I didn't know. I would question that too. I would question that too. 40 beer cans on the floor.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Political science and marketing. I graduated uh at the end of 92. So in the summers when I'd come down and stay with my parents, that's when I did cable with Doug. So that's so for three months we basically hung out every night selling cable. So that's how we became close. But um like uh Wayne's World and Garth type things.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Like two of you guys.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

We got to a point, I think it's Did you drive a gremlin back then? I had a little hatchback 323 Mazda 323. We had no money. That that's a thing a lot of people don't realize. You know, our parents were did did well, his parents were fine, but you know, we we had to make it on our own. And um, you know, if we struggled, of course, they'd be there. But all the we started buying houses at 25. Wow. So there was a thing with HUD homes, you know, FHA loans that went to foreclosure. Yeah, there was a lot of them back then, and you used to have to FedEx your bid in. So every Tuesday you'd FedEx your bid, and if you want, again, these houses were going 60, 70 grand, whatever. And and you did that, and if you want it, you know, you had to put up a thousand dollars, and if you want it, they'd send you a thing back. So very slow, very archaic. And the internet had just you know come about. So they said, All right, we're gonna start doing it online. Well, most of the realtors didn't understand even how to turn on a computer. So we were we were winning a ton of bids. Wow, we'd put in stuff and we'd win it, and we're like, oh, geez. Okay, so if we put in five bids, we might get one. Sometimes we put in two and we get both of them, you know. So it was you never knew. Uh, but if you didn't take the house, you lost a thousand dollars, which is a lot of money. So I was doing the financing, Doug was doing the real estate, so we kind of figured out like, okay, let's just every house that we think is good. And again, we'd buy houses for 60, sell them for 70. And 10 grand back then was like a lot of money, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

So we would do that, and we one time we put in four bids and we got all four houses.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

And we knew all four of them were good deals, but we didn't have the money, right? So we maxed out all our credit cards, we did every took loans out on our cars, we did everything we could to make sure that we paid the money so that we could get the houses, and then I refinanced two of them, and the other two we sold, and with that money we were able to pay back everything. So that's what we did. We would keep some and sell some, and uh, and it worked, and you know, it was stressful, but it was fun, it was exciting, and then you know, we dealt with contractors who they'll be great on two houses and then flake out on the third. Yeah, like it's very inconsistent. We had one guy working on the house and he disappears on us, and we're like, what the heck's wrong with this guy? He disappears, but he didn't get our money, so we're like, why wouldn't he come for our money? It turns out he owed child support in Ohio. Oh, and they uh arrested him. They arrested him, threw him in jail and oh, oh no, yeah, his one call wasn't to us. So we didn't find out for like a month or two. But I mean, those kind of things, because a lot of times when you buy those houses, you have to go on what's called hard money, which at that time was 18%. Uh now it's between 12 and 14. But and I'll go into that a little bit on how to how to do that. So that's that's one of the things Doug and I do is uh Vix and Flip show every Saturday at noon on KTAR. Okay. So yeah, if you're just driving around, put it on. But um, usually we just make fun of each other, but we have some tidbits in there.

SPEAKER_04 27:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

But yeah, basically, so you're on hard money, so every day it's costing you a fortune that you can't sell that house or refinance it. And again, you can't get a loan on a house that's in disrepair. Yeah, right. And a lot of these houses, if you don't fix them up, you don't get the appraisal, you can't get a regular loan.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

I might do the math and I'm going, I'm going 500,000 at 12% interest. I mean, that's freaking nut, man. It's a lot.

SPEAKER_02 28:57

It's a lot. And you know, that's how I got my house I'm in now that we play basketball in. Really? I'll tell you that story. No kidding. So in 2004, I'm at lunch, and we kind of been looking at a house. You had three boys. We we lived at uh baseline in Ellsworth. Nice house, but we we wanted a yard. We had a tiny yard. And uh Doug calls me up and he goes, Hey, go look at this house. I'm like, whatever, Doug. You know, we're always messing with each other. And he goes, No, stop what you're doing, go look at this house right now. I go, I'm in the middle of lunch. He goes, do it right now. You you know, the auction goes off at three, so at noon I stopped, I stopped eating, I drove down, saw the house, jumped the fence, because you know there's no one living there, just looked in the windows, that's all I could do. And I said, Oh man, this but it's on an acre, right? So I'm like, let's do it, pull the trigger, and uh so I saw it at about 1 p.m. and I owned it at 3 p.m.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Wow, yep, 10 no.

SPEAKER_02 29:56

So back with foreclosures, it's 10 grand up front. Okay, and you had to have the money within 24 hours, so then I had to come up with the other 500 grand the next day. So stressful as heck. Sure. Couldn't get into the house. So I ended up um getting the hard money, which is three hundred dollars a day if you do the math, because it was 18%. So three hundred dollars a day. And um changed the locks, called the cops because there was an alarm on it. I had the cops go in, which saved me. I'll tell you why. So the first day I owned it, cops went in there, I waited by the front door, they had their guns out, they went through all the rooms, they heard the BB, and I hear them yell, there's a movie room in here. It's like, oh, that's great.

SPEAKER_05 30:38

You know, like we didn't know, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

So then they come out and they're like, Yeah, the house is empty, you know, we we unplugged the alarm, went in, all the you know, we still have the couches for the movie room in there. Really? No kidding. That was awesome. Yeah, 2000 that was 2004. So we ended up um getting the house, and there was a period there where there's these scammers from California that changed the locks on my house and said they owned it. Oh because back then you couldn't get title insurance right away. So anyway, I don't I don't want to go into that. That's a that's a whole hour story, but basically I was able to win that case. No kidding. And then I refinanced in ten days. So being in the mortgage business helps. So I was only on that hard money for ten days.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

I was gonna say it's gotta be, I mean, if you could pick an industry that could absolutely help change your life. Yeah, mortgage or real estate, yeah. Right? I mean, two extremely hard industries to be in.

SPEAKER_02 31:37

They are very competitive. You you've got to be on your toes, and even the hardest workers don't make it. It's it's about understanding how the game is played.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Yeah, and that's what I was gonna say is, you know, like I think about insurance. Insurance is great because of the residual, right? You build it up, you you get it to a point where the residual is doing very well, and then you just maintain the relationships that you have and hold it.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

But you got guy you've got a million competitors after that. Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Every day they're getting bombarded, right? Bombarded not only by local, but national. Yeah. I mean, you know, commercials and everybody's saying, hey, save money, save money, save money, save money. And you could yeah, you could recite every commercial. And it's like, uh at what point do we say, hey, having a consultant, an insurance consultant, and you know, you say an agent, but an insurance consultant is a good thing. Same thing with the mortgage industry. I mean, and I'm sitting here thinking about you and Doug, and I'm thinking, what a what a perfect storm or a perfect team to be able to go, okay, I understand how the back-end mortgage business works. Doug understands how the transactions work, probably understands a little bit of the mortgage side of it, but then you can start looking at things like you know, tax lane foreclosures and then actual foreclosures and you know, different things like that where you can say, okay, now I'm gonna show up on the courthouse you know steps and bid on these things.

SPEAKER_02 32:57

And so Yeah, that's that's where Doug really took off, is is doing the foreclosures. If you remember, gosh, in 2008 when the crash happened, I mean uh the company I worked for, Great Southwest Mortgage at the time, they went bankrupt. Excuse me. So at uh there was a thing called an imploder meter. I don't know if you remember that. It was on it was on the internet. You could look up every day to see which companies went out of business. And it was up to like 390. Right. So it kept going, and I called my, you know, the gu the owners, and they're like, Oh, we're gonna be fine, we're gonna be fine. Well, we sold uh all of our loans to countrywide. And you know what happened to countrywide, right? Anyway, so there was a day, I'll never forget, August 17, 2007. My brother was supposed to close on his loan. And I called down, I said, Why haven't you funded this loan? It was uh our funding department was in Tucson, and the girl started crying. She goes, Haven't you heard? We're not funding anything, we're done. And then she started crying. Oh, I don't know if I'm supposed to tell you, and she hung up. I'm like, what the heck? So I because again, I need to this is how crazy it was. In July of 2007, they had record profits. They made more money than they ever had. And they had been in business for 15 years, and 17 days later, they're bankrupt. Wow. Because they could not sell the loans, and again, this was subprime, this was all the craziness. So my brother didn't fund his loan, which he ended up not getting the house, which was a blessing. Which is a blessing, yeah. But um, but yeah, so it it turned into this whole thing where where do you go? Everybody's crying, that people don't didn't get paychecks, people didn't have insurance. I mean, it was it was dark times back then, and you remember um so Doug got on that show foreclosure or uh property wars. Okay, yep. So I had the idea because I'm watching this and thinking, like, this is crazy. You see whole neighborhoods with for sale signs.

SPEAKER_04 34:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:53

So I uh I flew my brother out, he's a filmmaker, Brian, and uh I had him film, it was called uh foreclosure inc, and he literally went with guys knocking on doors telling people that they're foreclosed on. And uh it was real life, it wasn't the reality show that you see now. No, it was real raw. Wow, and so he did that and he had a lot of footage to that, and uh somebody saw that and um one of the producers and then called Doug to do the show. And the very beginning of Property Wars, where you see all that the the houses for sale and all that, that's my brother's filming. Really? They paid him for that. Wow. Yeah, so it went from like what real reality show to their reality, which I don't know if you've seen that show still. Even my my six-year-old at the time was watching, and he's like, if Doug's opening the door for the first time, how did the cameraman get into the door?

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Right, right, right, right, right. I'm like, come on. You see those, like it's like the cameraman's, oh hey, good to see you, good to meet you.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

You know, it's like for the first time, the locksmith. And what about the time he's knocking on the garage door and he goes, Oh, there's a car in here? Like he can hear it. Yeah, it's just anyway. Look, it was a fun show. It was great to watch. It was it was funny as heck. I don't know if you remember that there was a shot where Doug challenged somebody to a race. Because again, as big as Doug is, he's pretty athletic. And this other guy said, There's no way you beat me in a race. So they they said, All right, let's do this. So they filmed it, and this is real. They both raced. His name was Scott, and like 10 feet in, he hadn't sprint in years. He fell.

SPEAKER_05 37:00

Oh, scraped himself. He was bleeding. And Doug one, yeah. And they raced in the street. That's that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Yeah, so so that propelled Doug to the point where he was able to do seminars and then, of course, start. He couldn't adapt though. Once the foreclosures ended, then he started buying houses for cash, as you see. Yeah, way too many commercials.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

I don't know. There's like there there are a lot of, and it's funny because after we released his podcast, I've I I've had to hide multiple comments on social media because people seem to not like the commercial.

SPEAKER_02 37:37

I don't know if there's a jealousy thing, or and then they make fun of how he looks. And I mean, oh gosh, you should see the stuff he gets.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

I I can only imagine. Only imagine. Yeah. But yeah, it's it's pretty funny. I'm like, oh, we'll we'll block that one. So yes. So you meet Margaret. Yes, you're in college, yes, you graduate college, you go from selling cable to doing mortgages. How'd you end up finding yourself in a in a leadership position in the mortgage industry?

SPEAKER_02 38:06

So I started at 23, 1993, in February, and uh had my first deal, and I realized, wow, this is, you know, I'm basically poor. And they would give us 10,000 flyers every every quarter to to hand out. So I'm out there in the morning hanging out with flyers, and then at the night when people come home from work, they would call me. You know, no cost refi. And so I I answer the phone and I just I I knew that hey, this is something special. People save a lot of money. This is kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing, kind of to drop two points, you know.

SPEAKER_04 38:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

So I I figured it out, and then once I got so busy I couldn't hand out the flowers anymore, I just hired all my friends. And they would go, or kids, they would go and and disperse them all in the neighborhoods, and uh, and so a lot of guys would get the 10,000 flowers and not do anything with them. And it just blew me away, like for free. Why don't you, you know, why aren't you doing this? Or they wouldn't answer their phone or not call people back. I tell you what, the number one reason I was successful in the beginning is because I answered my phone and I called people back, and if I didn't know the answer, I just say, I don't know, I'll find out.

SPEAKER_04 39:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

Because back then it was it truly was insane how um on people just didn't communicate. I don't know if they were busy, they didn't want to talk to me. I I don't know. Because I I could hear it, you know, you could hear each other's offices. Yeah, yeah. So eventually, you know, I I I was doing I think in my third month I did 40 loans. So you know, had it figured out. I had I was hiring everybody I could just to help me. And so I went from there, then he wanted to expand to Flagstaff. I wanted to move back to Flagstaff, which was great. So I moved back to Flagstaff, he made me a manager. I hired uh again, I'm 23, don't know what I'm doing. I hired an experienced L-O, and um uh it was tough because she was older, a lot more experienced than me, but just didn't have the drive. So if I do more loans than her, and and I was just trying to, you know, help her, but um, it was a really, really tough learning lesson on okay, how do people perceive you? You know, I realized that I knew how to get loans done, I knew what what it took, but I also knew that a lot of you know LOs that I hired just had a lot of personal problems. So I became kind of like a counselor. So I would just be like, listen, don't do this, do this. So so yeah, people come to my office and and basically tell me all their problems and I would try to help them. And in the meantime, they were amazing salespeople. Yeah, and at some point, you know, like you said, I had close to 40, 50 LOs working under me. And I just would teach them, hey, this is what you gotta do to make loans close. So when I went to Flagstaff, it was great. We worked a while, the market was very small there, so I moved back down and then expanded with uh Gene Lines. Gene Lines was my mentor, I worked with him eight years. He taught me everything uh and was that was uh helped me become an underwriter. So I was an underwriter for a while, built up my team, and then when the crash happened, we were down to 14 people from 50 to 14. Wow. And from 2008 to 2016, we had 150 people. Wow. And that's when we did the most loans. And you know, if you treat people right and you care about them and you and you're genuine about it, I think um that's a key. Because I did. I I love coming to work every day, and you know, it there's always something, there's the stress in this industry is horrible, right? I mean, even someone that can quote, you know, thinks they're they're A plus borrower, you know, something will happen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

What would you say you know, maybe just somebody starting out in your industry? What what one piece of advice other than don't do it? Yeah, I got boys that uh kids that you know.

SPEAKER_02 41:57

My oldest is actually at the end of the day. Oh, is he? He he works for Doug now, but so my youngest is looking to get into it. I would say the best thing is to is to be a part of a team. To be honest, um, even Marcus, I had Marcus go work for like uh countrywide. Okay, or go work for Lone Depot or Quicken just to get the experience because it's really hard to teach if you don't know the basics. Gotcha. And and if you come to work for a company that you know does well, but you maybe talk to one or two people a day. At one of those, you're talking to 40, 50, 60 people a day. Yeah. You're you're you're figuring out loans, you're learning the lingo, your understanding program, you do that for six months to a year, and then you're ready to expand and and do your own thing. So that that's my advice, and I've given that to a lot of family members.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

Yeah. So you were with Academy for about 10 years. Um and then was that up until you started Mortgage Tree?

SPEAKER_02 42:55

No, so I I was at Academy, and then that was what 2018, and then I worked for like a couple other retail shops where where I really saw how retail and broker, the the difference and and the fact that I need to be a broker became very relevant.

SPEAKER_00 43:13

So is is it similar to insurance where retail you're kind of a captive for one market and then brokerage, you're obviously brokering for multiple markets?

SPEAKER_02 43:22

Yes, yes. That that's part of it. The other part of it is you're just beholden to their rules and their you're closing it. So to make it simple to somebody like if I was at Academy, I close it in Academy's name, and the Academy might sell to somebody else. Gotcha. As a broker, you can pick who you're gonna sell to. We have 40 different brokerage firms we can sell to. Everybody's competing for rate, for you know, for your service. So that competition helps the consumer because they're all trying to get your business, they're all trying to make it efficient and give you the best rate possible. Okay, so I'm able to shop rates better, I don't have corporate overhead. The fact that you're being a broker back in the day was horrible because you used to have the FedEx a file, right? Yeah, uh, you know, everything was paper back then. Now everything's digital, everything's so quick and efficient. Uh we send a lot of stuff to UWM.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 44:16

United Wholesale Mortgage, which Matt Isbia owns a sons.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

And I know that name.

SPEAKER_02 44:21

Yeah, he he he's a sons owner.

SPEAKER_00 44:24

Oh, okay, okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:25

And just recently he just changed it to Mortgage Matchup Center, which I hate that name.

SPEAKER_05 44:30

I don't know why he named that.

SPEAKER_02 44:32

But uh he I believe in him. He it's amazing what he's created. He's a number one mortgage broker in in the country. They're more than quicken, and he just uh he helps support all the brokers out there. So but he's just one of them of of 40 that we can use. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

Yeah, gotcha. And you're just you just do residential mortgage lending, right? You don't do commercial lending?

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Well, um yeah, I would say yeah. I'd say ninety percent is residential. We have a a program called uh DSCR loan, which is basically a loan for investors that wanna buy. Uh investment properties with 20% down, 700 FICO, they don't uh verify your income. Oh and that's considered a commercial loan.

SPEAKER_04 45:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

And I'm doing a lot of those. Nice. Uh they're simple, the rates are good, and you know, someone that's self-employed or wealthy people a lot of times have lots of LLCs, lots of uh things you'd have to verify, and it becomes just a nightmare. Yeah. So this this makes it simple and easy. Even if you know you're not making a lot of money, you can as long as they're looking at the property and the equity you have, and that your mortgage payment is about similar to the rent. Gotcha. That's the key. So gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 45:43

So yeah, but so tell me tell me about mortgage tree. Tell me when you decided that you were gonna go in essence out on your own. Because you're your owner or partial owner of it. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 45:53

I own it with two other people. Yeah, Marcus is one of them. Oh, okay. Yeah, Christian, he's up in Idaho. So we started when they started it about six months before I came in. I actually encouraged them to go there because I I had to wait for a while. But um, yeah, it's it's just it's night and day. They're faster, the rates are better, and it pays more.

SPEAKER_04 46:50

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 46:51

There's really in a nutshell, that's what it is. Uh there's no reason retail, unfortunately, is like a dinosaur. It's like one of those things where brokers are just gonna take over. And it's crazy because they got about I think 28% of the market. Uh a lot of the in the east coast and that kind of thing, it's just hasn't caught on as it has in the southwest, but it will. And I think that next five years it'll be over 50%.

SPEAKER_00 47:15

Do you have a a team that works for you now?

SPEAKER_02 47:18

Yeah, yeah. We have uh 12 people that that work for us. Uh again, it's it's crazy because back in the old days you needed like five people in the file to fix it or to make a loan go. Now you need maybe two or three. That's it. It's everything's automated, everything's simple, and it gets better every month. And they strive to get better. And UWM has kind of set the standard. I mean, I would say they're the most efficient, but everybody else is trying to emulate what they're doing. So it's just bringing the level of service up. Whereas retail still thinks that the old school way works, and it's just not it's not working.

SPEAKER_00 47:53

If if you could go back to any point in your life, to a decision that you made, maybe you regret or that you change differently. What what what what is that and and how would do you think that would impact impact where you are today?

SPEAKER_02 48:08

I I should have gone broker about six years, seven years ago instead. I I held off on it. Uh I still had the the notions that it wasn't the right time or whatever. Um I should have done it. I had a couple partners that I was working with that if we would have done it, it it would it would have made a fortune. I would have made a fortune. So I would say that that's probably my regret. I mean, we're doing quite well, but it uh it just I kicked myself thinking, you know, I should have done. And everybody that goes to the broker world, if you ask any yellow in the last three years, they'll say I wish I'd done it sooner.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

Yeah. Yeah. I can say that about opening my agency, which yeah, I mean, I've had it for seven years, almost seven years now. But I've been in the industry for 30, you know, and you're like, well, I'm not quite ready. I don't know that I necessarily know what I don't know, I don't know how to do this, I don't know how to do that, I don't know the you never know. Right. You're never ready. If you wait for ready, it's never gonna come.

SPEAKER_02 49:08

Just like having a kid, right?

SPEAKER_03 49:09

Yeah, that's what it's wait till we're all stable. Yeah, you're never stable.

SPEAKER_00 49:13

Never, ever. And it's it's interesting because that's that's the one thing I feel like if I could go back today, because I remember I started in claims and I remember I was with Farmers Insurance, but one of the district managers of Farmers Insurance, he's like, You would be an incredible agent. You should come to work for us. Well, it was a pretty significant pay cut. Right. And then you kind of have this build-up to three years of then you're on total commission. And I just my mind, I couldn't figure it out. I'm like, I that doesn't make any sense to me. Like, how am I ever gonna get there? And they're like, make a list of a hundred people that you know and call those people. And you know, it's like totally things I'm gonna do, right? Yeah, totally to things I tell people, don't do that. But but um I just remember at that time thinking, God, there's no way. But now I look back and and and the 2008, I had just left Traveler's Insurance to go basically partner in a personalized agency. We did majority m mortgage and homeowner stuff, a lot of mortgage brokers we were working with. And when when SB 1070 and the market crashed pretty much simultaneously, it was like, you know, the whole thing just disappeared. And um but I look back now and I think, you know, I and I didn't know commercial insurance at that time, which is really more what I focus on today, but but had I made that jump sooner, like the energy level, what I did, how how methodically I worked through different things, even when I got into commercial insurance 15 years ago. You know, and it's like, God, had I just but you can't, you know, you can't.

SPEAKER_02 50:45

You can't look back. I mean, again, I I wouldn't change anything in the fact that my experience and you know what what you know, the trips, all all the things that we were able to do while I was working. Yeah. So it it yeah, it all it all is out, but there was a time where I was like, gosh, I should I should have done that. Just like you, yeah, pull the trigger.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

And you're again, you you will never be ready in your mind. Yeah. Right. You just gotta go for it.

SPEAKER_02 51:11

That's the thing I would tell, you know, I tell my kids, sometimes you gotta take that risk and go for it. You know, it just life is short and you gotta you gotta do it. And you know, one of the things I heard was uh, you know, why why are in America a lot of the you know, new businesses, a lot of these startups, a lot of things are started in America and not other countries. And why is that? And the reason is our bankruptcy loss. Yeah, you know, you could go and fail and still be okay. Yeah, right. You you can recover, it takes maybe a year or two, but you can come back. Whereas other countries, no, you can't, you know, you fail and and that's it, you're done. You can't ever do anything and you're you're labeled and all that stuff. So I think that helps risk takers. If you look at, you know, Elon Musk, some of the others, I mean, there were points where they were so close to bankruptcy or so close to failing, but that's what you need to do in order to get to the next level.

SPEAKER_00 52:03

Well, and that's the that it it it's incredible that you say that, because that is so absolutely true. Resonates with me. I mean, having obviously been through that whole process.

SPEAKER_04 52:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:13

You know, and and not only in essence are you failing, and I say failing, because you are failing, right? To finally get to that point of I'm going to run through bankruptcy, right? Yeah. And I went through bankruptcy, divorce, foreclosure, all that stuff at the same time. That's stressful. I can't imagine. Yeah. But to to be able to say, I can curl up in this corner and become a victim of that circumstance, or I can take the opportunity, which we have, which is beautiful, and be able to go, okay, yeah, I'm not gonna let that define me, and it sucks, and I completely failed, and now you're carrying the burden of I failed my ex, I failed my kids, I failed my parents, which is the biggest part for me, was like that whole thing. I mean, not necessarily where my kids were.

SPEAKER_02 53:05

Yeah, but it's not like you you wanted that to happen. You tried everything you could to not, and it just that life does have to be.

SPEAKER_00 53:11

Absolutely, absolutely. But but to be able to have that ability to say, okay, well and it's funny because when we went when we finally went to the bankruptcy attorney, he said, you guys waited too long. I was like, what are you talking about? He said, You blew through all of your savings. I'm like, well, but we would have lost that inquiry. He goes, No. The court understands that you have to have the ability to support yourself. So they're not going to take all of your money. They're not gonna take your car. You got out of the car, you got out of the house. Right. Yes. So it was one of those things that was I mean, not that I would advocate for somebody to go file bankruptcy, but I would say if you feel like you're at that point, don't wait too long. Yeah, don't wait too long. Don't wait too long.

SPEAKER_02 53:48

That's great advice. Because a lot of times people don't realize that. And again, it wipes the slate clean. It's a horrible experience.

SPEAKER_00 53:54

It's it's uh And it makes things tough.

SPEAKER_02 53:56

It makes it tough, and you go through hell and you're and someone's telling you what you can spend money on, but at the end of the day, it helps you reset. And uh that's something that we have that's that's amazing. Yeah, you know, you look at even Trump went through that and he used it, you know, multiple times. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

And and people say it's so horrible. It's like I you know, I understand that thought process where it's like, okay, well, you took all this money and then you filed bankruptcy and you're delinquent. It's like but there's circumstances that happen in business that we don't have control over.

SPEAKER_02 54:29

We don't, and the banks took the risk too. So yeah, I mean, look, we're not advocating to do this. No, absolutely. And you know, the the cream rises at the top. A lot of times when they're you know, when it gets tough, it's it's makes you stronger. Yeah. And you don't realize that at the time, but it it does. And yeah, it's it's tough. My parents went through rough times. Everybody goes through it. It's just a matter of what are you gonna do, you know, when you get up.

SPEAKER_04 55:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:04

You know, and you gotta get up. Yeah, you gotta get up and and go to work and do whatever you gotta do. And it's tough. It's tough. But yeah, it's um, yeah, you've been through a lot, Jan. It's it's great seeing you when it's so I see you all the time. I so we do the eight, let's talk about APN. APN.

SPEAKER_00 55:18

APN, I love APN. Well, no, I absolutely do. I uh but I want to ask you a question because you kind of bring this up. You you gotta get up, right? You gotta get up every morning, you gotta do it. What drives you out of bed in the morning? What what gets you to say, okay, I'm gonna go do this again today?

SPEAKER_02 55:33

Yeah, you know, I I tell you, I I've been working out in the mornings, right? And uh it's I I usually go at seven 7 30, and I'll wake up and be like, I don't want to get out of bed. And not only that, but they're gonna torture me. And so you just realize okay, man, I yeah, I'm we're getting older, yeah, and I want to be around with the grandkids, right? I got the two grandkids, and I know that working out is the best thing you can do after 50. I mean, I'm not saying it's good if you're younger, but like the single most they they say is is doing that. That's gonna help help you physically, mentally, all that. So yeah, it's just a matter of look, I want to live, I want to see the family, I want to be, you know, vibrant, I want, I want to still hold on the youth. I'm 55 and I think I'm 35. Yeah, down. You know, I still back of your eyes, you see that.

SPEAKER_03 56:22

I do. And I always think like, you know, I can do that, hold my beer.

SPEAKER_00 56:26

Let me jump in those bushes. Exactly. I got this.

SPEAKER_02 56:30

But no, I I do. I and I I try to keep that mentality, and uh, you know, the whole you're only as old as you think, but you know, there's times you sneeze wrong, right?

SPEAKER_05 56:39

Oh, you're messed up. Like every day. Like all the seven.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

But at least you can try to uh minimize those those things. So um, so yeah, I get up, I I'm you know, to my wife for my kids for the grandkids, you know, you want to be there for them and you want to be around and you want to be healthy. I mean, we went on a trip to um Portugal, Spain, and then Croatia. Wow. And we walked 20,000 steps a day, you know, walking off there. Jerry and Kisa were there. Okay. Yeah. Nice. And um Rick and Eileen. So we we um went with two other couples, it was a blast. But man, if you're not healthy or you can't keep up or you're just tired, you know, you you it would have ruined the trip. And so you just gotta think about that as you get older. So, yeah, that's my motivation is like, look, I want I want to live, I want to be as healthy as possible, even though we partake a little bit, right? Yeah, well, you gotta have to do that.

SPEAKER_00 57:33

I think you have to live life, right? Yes. I mean, we're gonna die.

SPEAKER_05 57:37

You are gonna die at some point. But you want to be healthy right before.

SPEAKER_00 57:41

Well, sure. I just want to go to sleep and not wake up. That's that's I I don't want to do any of the other stuff.

SPEAKER_03 57:46

But no, no, no, that bankruptcy stuff's over. Come on, you're fine.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

I I just I it's funny. I was talking to uh I don't know, naturopath or something the other day. But but I it's one of those things where and I've told my kids this. If I get to the point where I'm in a wheelchair and I'm eating green slop, just push me right now. I'll take care of the rest.

SPEAKER_05 58:05

It's like I got this. Just give me the knob with the heroin. Yeah, or the morphine. Yeah, the morphine.

SPEAKER_02 58:10

Just turn it up. Turn it up, let me go. Yeah, because you you you know, that whole you want to, you know, die, not fade away, right? Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:18

What what would you say with regards to your journey? Yes, is the one thing that people don't see. Let's see, they don't see.

SPEAKER_02 58:25

Yeah, I'm pretty happy-go-lucky guy, right? You've known me for years. Very positive. I'm very there's I mean, the stress that I have endured or endured, you know, four kids and dealing with the mortgage and the mortgage crisis and stuff. I mean, the stress level gets uh almost unbearable sometimes. And and I can't show that, right? I mean, I don't want to show it because I I don't want to alarm, you know, the family. So that's probably one thing that and and I think we all go through it, especially, you know, I'm not not putting away just as a father and as a provider, you you know, that's like the one thing that's every day it's like okay, what what are you gonna do? Because even as the kid gets older and they're successful too, you gotta help, you gotta be there for them too. So it's like that stress. And now now with your parents too, you want to be there for them because they're starting to decline. So I think that's a part that I would say if if you know, upcoming that the stress that that you are under, not just me, but yeah, it's gonna be, yeah, it's tough. And just when you think you're out of the woods, you're not, because the kids get older and their problems become more expensive.

SPEAKER_00 59:37

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. My daughter just had my first grandson.

SPEAKER_02 59:42

Oh, congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 59:43

And not that we've had any issues, I'm not saying that, but but yeah, I mean, you think about that, it's like, okay, now I want to be able to do things with and for him. Yes. So it's like, okay, how do I do that? How old? How old is he? He is four, eight, ten weeks, ten or eleven weeks.

SPEAKER_02 59:58

Congratulations. That's awesome. Yeah, it's the best thing. I tell you, we you know, he just turned one. We're taking uh our our oldest to uh the pumpkin patch and let him see zebras for the first time and all this stuff at the farm. It's it's so much fun. And we take them for three hours and give them back.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:14

Yeah, that's awesome. That's a good part. I get the opportunity here coming up uh next week. Uh it'll be my first grandpa gets to watch. Oh, you're gonna be the big I get to watch them for like four hours.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:27

Oh wow, you got the diaper change. That's the one thing I'm trying to avoid.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:32

You may go back with a dirty diaper. I don't know. But uh, that's awesome. No, I'm I'm excited. I'm excited, and and uh you know it's it's crazy because it seem it and I this used to piss me off when people tell me, enjoy it because it goes fast. Yeah and I'd be like, shut up. It couldn't go fast enough. When are they gonna start talking? When can they tell me what the matter is? You know I look at I look at him and I it's I can't believe how small he is. I mean he's just a little bean, yeah, but he's so precious, and it's like you just want to just hold a minute.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:06

And every time we get pictures, every week, he's bigger. He's yeah, now he's interacting, he's walking around, and it is it's fun, and it it wears you out too. It goes it goes quick. Yeah, because they can at any point hit their head on anything. Yeah, just like not on my watch.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:21

Right, right, right. Just stay still, stay still, and don't cry because I don't know what you want. So tell tell me about where you're at today, what what businesses you've got going on. You've got mortgage tree, obviously.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:33

Yeah, we got so I got mortgage tree. I got into the hub. If you heard of the hub sports bar, yeah. So we started on uh sausaman and baseline. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:44

Yeah, I you do. They're smoked, yes, they're smoked. And they fall off the bone. Fall off the bone, I'm still trying to replicate the fall off the bone smoked wings. I can't get there. You'll get there. You'll get I'll get my chef to call you.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:56

But yeah, we um so we started it there, gosh, 12 years ago, I believe it's been, and um, and then it burned down three years ago.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:04

Oh, I think I heard that.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:06

Burned down New Year's Eve. Did you remember? We did, and it took forever because COVID was in, uh, the insurance company's fault. We had a water heater explode and burn the whole place down. So we all had to, you know, come up with money, do all the things we had to do, and so we uh rebuilt it and it's amazing now. So Saucaman and Baseline, it's we expanded, it's all brand new. We we lengthened the bar, we changed the whole way the the restaurant looks, and it's been it's been great, but very stressful. So now we have uh five locations now.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:40

Really? Yep. I did not know that. I mean, we had two. I didn't realize that.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:44

Yeah, we have one on Stapley. Okay, we have the Union on uh Baseline and Higley. Oh I didn't realize that was yours. Stapley and Baseline, and we also have McDowell and um I think it's power. McDowell and Power. Over by uh Nando's. Is that the old uh It was the old uh mushroom that place? And then we have one in Awatuke. Okay. Yeah, so so it's been great. It's it's fun because you know, restaurants normally don't survive. Our first month, you know, 12 years ago, we're sitting there with my wife, and we see this couple get up and leave. And it's always kind of cool as a guy to have a sports bar, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:20

So the guys walked out, and we had I had a 25, a bunch of $25 gift cards in my pocket. I walked out there, I'm like, hey sir, sorry, you know, you didn't get service. We're figuring things out. Here's a $25 gift card, please come back. And he took looked at it and he gave it back to me. He goes, Why would I come to a shitty sports bar?

SPEAKER_05 1:03:37

I don't want to I don't have a shitty sports bar. That's not the guy's dream. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You would have a cool sports bar.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:43

So we all got together, and again, we we weren't really in the restaurant business. Uh shout out to Kenny Klaus. He he helped create this. So we hired the right people. Uh, hired a guy from Uncle Bears, and then we, you know, basically the food, you know, we hired a really good chef. Food was great, better than your average sports bar. Not like a nice restaurant, but right in the middle there. We had tons of tap, lots of beer, and the service was great. And so we exploded. And so that um that really helped. And we would bring our meetings there, tell all our friends to go there. So we we really promoted it ourselves, and then from there it just it blew up. So that's been exciting. So that's been a while. And then my favorite thing too now is uh Saint Canary. Okay. So Saint Canary is a basically a golf shirt, although I don't really golf that much, but I wear them out. I mean, this uh a nice shirt that you can wear out, it's very good quality. We've got great prints. If you go saintary.com, you'll see it all. You can order it. Uh we were just a little shop out of Gilbert. Um just drawing some examples. Let's let's show show some of these. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:49

So this is for those of you watching on YouTube.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:51

This is our this is our best seller here. That's cool. So it's got uh Day of the Dead, you know, D Las De Martis, and then we also uh this is our our newest, it's kind of like an ASU type Arizona shirt. Nice. See that there? So that's very popular. I mean, everybody loves a shirt, the collars stay. You can wear these for five years, it doesn't collapse.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:17

So I've got a couple of these through APN. Yes. So what do you do? Just upload design and it's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:23

So what we do is we'll do it for different events like APN. We've done it for a distillery, we've done it for a pizza place, we did it for the moose lodge.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:31

So we'll come up with a design that they they want, and then we'll make the shirts for them. Uh, you have to order, you know, a minimum, usually between uh 60 and 80. Okay. And that's what we did for APN. We did it for for a lot of the golf tournaments, that kind of thing. So and then we come up with our own designs too.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:48

How did you I'll say fall into that?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:51

So we were at a bar, okay, uh, and we saw this guy wearing a shirt. We're like, that shirt's awesome. But we want to buy it. So he actually his house was a mile away. He went and got the shirts, brought them back, bought them. And then he's we're like, this is great. These are quality shirts, got a lot of you get so many compliments on them when you wear them out. And uh, you know, Doug wore wore one. He's like, I don't know about the skulls and all that. He wore it, he goes, Everybody complimented me on the shirt.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:20

It's interesting because I'm not gonna say I'm like a shirt fanatic. I actually wear cheap t-shirts, but there's a certain t-shirt that I really like. Like I like the cut, I like the fit. It feels good, yes. That's how these are. Like when you put it on, it's like it hangs nice. Yeah, it's a nice shirt.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:37

It's you know, not good, like I said, the collars are gonna stay stay clean, uh, it's not gonna bundle up. So we um we found out they were having cash flow problems. So me and my friend Jake, we went in on it. So now it's uh three of us that are that are involved, and it's it's been a blast. Now we do monthly subscriptions where every six weeks you'll get a new shirt and just pay for a year in advance, and we do it. So we gotta get you signed up.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:03

I'm gonna have to look at that. You're gonna have to. Yeah, because I I do like those shirts. I I think I've got, gosh, like four or so of them uh through APN. And and actually I do. I really like the way that they hang. Yeah, I like how thin they are, especially out here in the desert. Yeah, because they breathe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:19

What uh what size are you? Large?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:21

Uh large.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:21

Lar or extra large, probably. Okay, we're gonna figure that out and then I'm gonna have to get you a shirt. Oh, I would love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:27

Yes. No, I I love your shirt. So I I didn't realize that you were actually doing that. That's that's pretty dang cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:32

Yeah, it's one of the cool things to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:33

Um all right. So we've got mortgage tree. Yes. We got five hub restaurants, yes. Which they're not all called the hub, but we'll say that.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:43

The hub except for one is called the Union.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:45

Okay. Yep. And then St. Canary. Yep, the shirt company. Yes. And then you do a radio show every Saturday on KTRR?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:54

I do. I do with uh with Doug. Okay. It's on from 12 to 1.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:59

When do you fit Margaret in your picture of that?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:01

Well, you know, uh the kids come and go, but um I I'm still the great thing about this job is you know you can be anywhere. Yeah. Uh when I was traveling abroad, as long as I had my phone and a computer, I could pretty much do my work. Right. Uh the good and bad part of my job is you don't have to meet with people anymore to do loans. Um everybody can just send it electronically unless they're over 75. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I like meeting.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:27

Then they're like, can I fax it? You're like, do you realize nobody has those anymore?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:30

No, I I gotta tell you, and and I love meeting with people because uh that's where I got my roots. So I'm I'm happy to do that, but most cases I don't have to. But I had a uh someone send me it. They took all their paperwork and laid it out on their kitchen table and then took a picture like 10 feet away. And they said, here it is. So yeah. So but I've I've gone to people's houses and picked up documents and and you know, I do whatever it takes to help people get alone. But and I like meeting with first-time home buyers because it's very um it's very scary and I don't understand. And so I I got a quick story for you. So, you know, I I when I pre-approve someone in Arizona, you have to have a lender pre-approve you on a on a uh piece of paper saying before you make an offer, you have to have a lender saying that you're good to go. Oh, really? I didn't realize that. Yeah, they do. So so people, you know, and it and it makes sense, right? Why would you make a contract on a house if people aren't qualified, right? And and people get excited about houses, but they don't get excited about paying for it. So nobody wants to talk to the financiers. Right. So so yeah, they you need that piece of paper, and uh I pre-approved these people a while back, they're first-time home buyers, and you know, three days later they call me, hey Kevin, uh I don't think we're pre-approved, but thank you for thank you anyway. Go, no, no, you're pre-approved, you're fine. You know, five days later they call me again. Uh listen, I I I thanks for all your work, but I obviously we're not pre-approved, so thanks anyway. And so I was like, okay, you're pre-approved, go find a house. Why do you think you're not? He goes, Well, we checked the mail again today and we didn't get the check. They thought they were gonna be asking. I was gonna send them a check for like 200 grand and please use this for a house. I know. But you know, sometimes you don't realize that people don't understand how it works. I I laid it out for them. I'm very detailed about everything that goes on in the transaction. Even people that buy houses sometimes don't understand exactly how it works. And so I'm I try to be very detailed and and let them understand and and watch out for scammers. I mean, I can't tell you how many people I deal with where they tell them they're approved they're not, or they're ripping them off because they don't understand the numbers. You know, it's funny the the government tries to, you know, okay, we're gonna make sure that everybody understands what's going on. It used to be a one-page good faith estimate. It had everything on there the rate, the payment, everything. Now they made it three pages. They confused everybody. No one understands.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:54

A lot of legal ease.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:55

Oh, yeah. It's just like, oh yeah, that now now you're being compliant. It's like, no, now you're just confusing people. So we had to create another piece of paper that's basically show them, okay, this is how it really works. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:05

So anyway, yeah, that's what um what would you say is the biggest misconception about the industry that you're in or what you do?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:16

I think a lot of people think that it's hard to buy a house, and it's not. There's a there's a huge segment of the population that thinks you have to have 20% down and you don't. For FHA, you have to have three and a half percent down, conventionals five percent down. There is programs for first-time homebuyers where you can get in for zero down. Uh you can get in less than for rent, you know, which is crazy. And right now it is a a buyer's market. You know, there's so many houses for sale. In other words, three, four years ago, there was maybe 11,000 houses for sale in the valley. Now there's close to 30,000. So think about that. So houses are staying on longer, sellers are more willing to give you concessions. My son just bought a house in April. Blake. And uh yeah, you played ball with his. Blake is 31 now.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:04

No kidding. My daughter just turned 30, so that's crazy. It's weird that they grew up. I mean, when you think about that, it's like, how did we get here? Because I remember 30. Yes. Yes. I was thinking the other day, I've been out of college for 30 years. Like, what?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:18

Try not to think about that, Yon. You know, we gotta stay. If I'm 35, that means I would I'm not gonna out of college album.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:25

But um, but yeah, no, so he got he was able to get 30,000 in concessions, was able to buy, do what's called a 2-1 buy down. I can't tell you enough how great this loan is, and I'll try to say it in a in a nutshell. So basically, if rates are at 6%, he got a 4% rate for the first year, 5% for the second year, and 6% fixed for the rest of the term.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:47

So it's not it's not a variable or whatever. It's not an arm.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:50

Okay. It's a fixed rate at six, but for the first two years you pay less. And guess who's paying it? The sellers. So the sellers give them this money, which uh on a $500,000 house would be about $13,000. They're giving them $13,000 that shows up on your mortgage statement. And every month it's depleted to make up the difference.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:08

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:08

So if rates do drop and you do refinance, you don't lose that money. That money goes back to you or towards the principal. Oh wow. So that's why when people say, Well, I bought the rate down, you know, half a point, or that that's you just blew it because if the rates go lower, you could have used that money for something. You could have lowered their sales price, right? Wow. So I I try to teach that to people. That's the best thing, and sellers are willing to do it, you know, they're willing to do those concessions.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:33

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:34

Yeah, so anyway, you you don't have to put a lot down. And the other big misconception, if your kids are in college, they have a decent credit score, they don't have to have income, you can co-sign for them, and they can get owner-occupied rates, which are super low, low down payment, 3.5%, co-sign for your kids before you go renting houses for them. Wow. People don't realize how easy it is. We just use your income, and as long as our credit's decent, it doesn't have to be great. Get them a credit card when they're 18. This is why I tell everybody get your kid a secured card at 18. On their 18th birthday, all my boys, we went down to the bank, they put up $500, they gave them a $500 card, it's just in their name, they buy gas with it, keep a small balance on it, and in six months they'll be a $700 score. Yeah. So anyway, you do that and you co-sign for your kids before, because otherwise, you know, I had so many times where you'll buy the house, four-bedroom, your kid lives in it, the other three roommates pay the mortgage. And then you're not, you know, otherwise you're paying a couple grand a month for for living expense. Yeah. Anyway, that's those are the misconceptions.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:38

That's awesome. What what's your line? What's your non-compromise line?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:44

I would say fraud. You know, I tell you, there's there's people out there that have uh, especially back in the day, you know, in the 2007s when the craziness was happening, where people want to do things that are not right. And I I I steer critical. Now again, I'll push things where they need to be pushed, and sometimes the rules are crazy, but but there are things that people have tried to do or tried to put over on me fake pay stuffs, fake W-2s, fake socials. It's not worth it, you know. My livelihood, my you you just don't cross that line. Yeah. Um, and that I'd say that was my my biggest thing. And there was a lot of people that did it and and did it for years.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:22

I s I see that all the time. My industry. Oh, yeah. Like people are like, well, you know, why'd you ask that question, or why do you need to know that that's personal information or whatever it is. And you're like, because this is my job, you know. Right, well, if you just say it's like you don't understand. Yes. If if if I misrepresent, we won't call it a lie. If I misrepresent the truth, yes, the facts, I could lose my license. My entire career of 30 years gone.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:54

Because they want to save a few bucks or something. There is no account large enough to warrant that. Never but there's people that all the time try to get away with, you know, buying an investment property as a primary residence, which I don't know if you notice that. Trump's going after one of the ladies for doing that. Oh, really? Is it but um but yeah, you know, if and it's a big deal, whereas the average person doesn't think it's a big deal. You know what I mean? It's like, so what if I'm buying, I'm paying the mortgage, who cares? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me the point, it's a point less. Saves you a fortune. I'm just gonna say I'm gonna live there. And then they don't. And uh, if they get caught, I mean it's it's horror, especially for you. So everybody, you know, I always think that I'm being recorded. I just in my mind think, okay, I'm being recorded, it's gonna go in front of a judge. I'm gonna say this, it's illegal to do that. Yeah, if you're gonna move in there, you have to move in within 60 days of e-close. If you don't, then there could be trouble. Now there's extenuating circumstances, yeah, obviously, but if that's not their intent, then you know, I make that very clear because it's not worth it.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:53

I think the best thing that happened to me was starting in claims and and special investigations, where it's like you get ingrained in your head all the bad stuff that can happen. Yes, you know, and if it's not documented, it didn't happen, don't care what you say ever, you know, and then you know, are we recording this or are we not? That sort of thing. I think that's the best thing that ever happened to me because it's like even having a conversation recently with a client, you know, where where there's a situation and they're asking me hypotheticals, and I'm like, look, as your agent, this is what the answer. I mean, this is I I I don't have the freedom to talk to you as a friend.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:34

Right. Like, listen, this is this is my business, this is how I'm telling you. If that's what you think or you do, but I I this is how it is. Yeah, you have to you have to draw that line. We had uh an LO that worked at another branch, and what they were doing is they were inserting child support orders to increase their income. In other words, and I don't think the borrowers even knew. Wow. So what they would do is they would show that they're making twelve hundred extra dollars a month for child support. And what they did is they took an actual child support order and just changed the names. And they would put it in files. They did it for three years. The only way they got caught is an underwriter saw back-to-back files, the same judge, they could see the dates were off, but the same amount of money, like it everything was the same, and they like, okay, this is definitely fraud. But they had gotten away with three years, so they basically just increase their income on child support. You can you can what's called gross it up. So that was giving them an extra $1,500, $1,600 a month to qualify them to get a loan. Yeah, it was it was crazy. That's brutal. Yeah, yeah, there's there was a lot of craziness that went on, so you just gotta be careful. That's brutal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:45

What what makes mortgage tree different? Because similar to me, there's a million agents, there's a million brokers. You can people say you can throw a rock and hit a dozen. You could because I've had a drink, something else wants to come out of my mouth, I'm not gonna say it. That's fine. Same thing with mortgage brokers, obviously, realtors, you know, yeah. But but what makes what makes mortgage tree different?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:10

You know, the reason I think realtors use me and send me business where they could send it to a million other people is because number one experience, 30 years doing it. I was an underwriter. If there's a way to do a loan, I'll find it, right? There are so many ways. I always say it's it's an art, not a science. Like the guidelines are the guidelines. And they're the same throughout the nation, right? FHA, VA, conventional. It's all the same. It's just how do you navigate through that and make it make sense so that the lender will do it. I can't tell you how many loans I get from LOs that have screwed up a deal. They don't understand how to do income, they don't understand community property laws, they don't understand what you can and can't do with certain debts, um, leases or businesses, or that you can add back depreciation and and business miles. They'll just say, Oh, well, this is your income. No, well, what about the pre-depreciation is huge in a lot of industries, right? You can add that back in. That could make or break a deal.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:11

Uh so it's just about uh I've seen a thousand scenarios. Because not only was I doing my own loans, I was helping people that were struggling with their loans. I had 150 employees, I had all these loan officers under me. Whenever they couldn't figure out a loan, it came to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:26

I could see it being pretty simple. If I work for a corporation, I get a paycheck, it is what it is, right? Right. But owning my own business, I'm doing everything I can. Yes. And I shouldn't say this on the record, to try to make it look as though I'm making as little as possible.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:43

Well well, what's great?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:44

And and I that's a bad thing to say, but No, no.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:47

What's what's great is we have the ability to get the best pricing because we have so many other vendors that we can use. And when you do a lot of business, they're allowed to give you better pricing for borrowers. In other words, if you do a certain amount of business, you watch videos, you educate yourself, you meet certain criteria, they're gonna give you points to help lower their rate. In other words, there are times where I can give up to a half a point better on a rate. And on a $400,000 house, that's that's two grand. Yeah. So so there's there's a lot of things that you can do. I think the the big thing for me, and the one thing that's helped me tremendously, is when you again I talked about that pre-approval letter. If a realtor calls me and it's a weekend, it's Saturday morning, these guys love the house. They they weren't even thinking about buying a house, right? They saw this house, they called up the realtor. We want to see it. Well, call Kevin. Make sure that you're approved. They'll call me up and I'll say, look, in order to make an offer on this house, because it's this good price house, you're gonna get a ton of offers. I need you to send me this, just a few things, and I'll give you that pre-approval in a half an hour. Banks take two to three weeks to send out a pre-approval. Because I've done it so long, because I can look at the information and decide, yes, we can do this, send out that pre-approval, and now they can make an offer. And that is huge. Realtors love that. And they know they know I know how important it is. I don't care where I'm at, what I'm doing, I'll stop, I'll take the call, say, okay, let's let's get you a pre-approval. Just send me a few things. Let me pull pull your credit, soft pull. We can all be done in a half an hour. And most times, you know, people, all right, I'll get back to you Monday, or I'll try to figure it out, or no, we need to I need to run it by an underwriter. No, I'm the underwriter, I figured it out. I'll get you that pre-approval right away. And that that's probably the biggest reason realtors use me from purchases. The other stuff or refines and everything, it's just because I can figure out the best rate for that client based on the criteria of the investors.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:49

Can you share what the craziest story you is? Oh, geez. Is there a craziest? I mean, whether it's an investment property that you and Doug did together and you almost got shot, or I mean, or a trip to Vegas where we probably shouldn't talk about that.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:04

I mean, no, I'm just kidding. No, that's fine. That's fine. Look, look, no. As long as you don't talk about hookers and blows, okay, that's fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:11

Yeah, yeah. Margaret.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:14

Of course. Uh no, I mean, I've had, you know, duck back in the foreclosure days, it it was tough because people were under a lot of stress. They're losing their house, and people would pull guns on when you go to the foreclosure. People would come in and, you know, try to get a loan, and there's just there was no way, right? They didn't have credit, they didn't have the money, and they would get very irate and upset. I pull somebody's credit and they almost wanted to beat me up because they saw I'm just the messenger, right? Yeah. I didn't I didn't show the late. I didn't so he'd be like, that's not right, and this isn't right, and this is wrong. You need to fix this. He's yelling at me, but he's poking me in the in the chest. And I said, Sir, I you know, I'm just showing you what they're reporting. These are other creditors, you know, uh credit cards and everything else. And he was so mad at me for showing it to him, and plus maybe he was embarrassed his wife was there, that he he was ready to fight me.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:10

Unless I fixed it. And I said, Sir, I I'm not the I'm not the one reporting it. I'm just I'm just the message. I'm pulling it up, and this is what it's showing. And yeah, he was so angry. He's like, You're telling me you're not gonna get me alone because so that was uh that was pretty hairy. And you know, I calmed him down, and and eventually he left. Uh I had another one where I pulled their credit, husband and wife, and there was like 10 department store credits all maxed out. And he looked at me, he goes, Oh, this is wrong. This isn't ours. So okay, no problem, you know, that happens. So as I'm like, I watched the wife put her head down. And I was like, Oh no. So I start going, Okay, well, you gotta contact the and as I'm saying it, the wife goes, Those are all mine. And he's like, What? She's yeah, they they gave me, you know, 15% off in my whatever. And so he goes, Kevin, I'm so sorry to waste your time. And he got up and uh hopefully, I don't know what happened. He was sick, so upset. But though the the best story, I'll tell you this, and and I I don't want to run out of time here. No, you're good. It was Thanksgiving Day, and this uh borrower was from Russia, and so in Russia, uh apparently everybody rips everybody off. That's what he thought. Imagine that. Yeah, and and my oldest son, Blake, he was the loan officer on it, and we played the Turkey Bowl on Sundays. Uh yeah, we still do.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:39

I think you've played before, yeah. I have played.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:41

So we played the turkey bowl. We actually made it to the championship, but he was so upset, and the realtor's like, he needs to meet with you today. I'm like, oh my gosh. So I didn't have time to go home and change because we're playing. So I said one o'clock at my office after the turkey bowl. I go to my upstairs office. My son's on the on the bottom floor. He didn't even want to meet this guy. And he looked like he he was an assassin. What are you doing? Yeah. So he sits down at my table in my office. I got pictures of my family up. I got Jim the realtor there, and I said, Okay, what's the problem? He's like, This is marked incorrect. The title company had accidentally marked it wrong. So it showed that there was more money that he had to come home. I said, That's not right. We'll get it fixed on Monday. Calm down, everything's fine. You're getting he was getting a zero-down loan, right? Oh, wow. So he's getting the best deal, and he keeps, and this Blake guy, he keeps telling me this and that. I go, Blake didn't do anything, it's the title company, right? And he doesn't know Blake's my son. So he keeps ripping on Blake and keeps saying all these things. And so, and the only way to combat these guys is to come back with the same energy. Like, you're wrong. Like, you have to like get in their face. Like, they don't respond to anything. If you're weak, they'll just eat you alive. So we're both me and the realtor, like, no, you're wrong. You're getting the deal a lifetime. Why? How the heck? What the heck's wrong with you? And you know, he's trying to sue everybody. So finally we convinced them that you know everything's fine, it's gonna work out. And uh, I had uh I had a bottle of vodka that a client had given me for closing, you know, from months before. And so we said, why not, you know, of course, vodka, Russia. So we all got a shot of vodka. We took a shot, we're all happy now. And I said, uh, hey, I want you to look over that picture. And he goes, Yes, that's your family, beautiful family. I go, that's Blake.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:34

And I pointed Blake out and goes, Oh my god, I disrespected your family, Kevin Mosario.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:41

Oh, he was so he was like, he went from wanting to kill us to, you know, felt really bad. We closed alone, everything was fine. But, you know, unfortunately, uh and in other countries, it is insane how much fraud and it's like everybody just automatically thinks you're getting ripped off. Yeah. Where here we have enough, and I'm not saying people don't, but I think it's way more in other countries. And so for him, any little mistake was oh, you guys are trying to screw me.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:09

Yeah, and so yeah, he and poor Blake, my son, was he's like, he's gonna kill me and coming after him, he's coming, he's like I got the Russian mom coming up and zeroed down my ass, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:22

So that's yeah, so those are a couple ones, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:25

So not nothing crazy. Now never never felt that was probably the closest to feeling threatened. He could have had a gun. We didn't check him.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:31

So might have been illegal. I don't know. Might have been success. How do you define success?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:39

I think success is waking up in the morning and feeling like you you've done your best. And again, that's somewhat cliche, but I I see a lot of people out there that that do well that look at other people that are doing way better than them and don't think that they're successful. And I think that's a big problem, especially with social media. Yeah. I see it all the time where you know they might be making a hundred, hundred and fifty grand and and they still feel less then because they don't have all the stuff. And and you know, material things don't matter. If you're happy, if you're doing well for your family, obviously you you you've got to have a roof on your head and and food and and cars that run. But for the most part, I think success is waking up and you know, you got a you got a good family, you got a uh a job that's that's paying you well. I mean, that that's success. I think um uh this whole, you know, if you have a billion dollars, an airplane, all that, that's that's not as a matter of fact, I know a lot of very wealthy people, and I can tell you that they're not the happiest. Yeah. They got warped senses sometimes of morals and and you know other problems. So I feel like that's not necessarily and again, not everybody, but I think the most important thing is having you know a family that loves you and knowing that you're doing your best. Yeah. You know, and you're gonna fall fail, you're not gonna do your best every day. But for the most part, if you're if you're grinding and you're doing what you're supposed to do, being a good mom, being a good dad, doing the thing, it it it comes back tenfold. And so yeah. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:17

That's awesome. What do you want your legacy to be?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:20

Oh gosh. So my oldest grandson is called Oliver Kevin. Okay. Which is funny because he got in trouble the other day and go, Oliver Kevin, and I thought I was in trouble too. Sorry. So no, I think that, you know, again, I I want to leave something for the kids, for the grandkids, but I just think, you know, hey, I I I helped out the family. Um I I I had a uh nephew who's not not related tell me, he said, you know, Kevin, you you're you're not very handy. Like I can't fix things, right? Uh that's not my forte. I can I can change a battery, okay? And the car. I would say the flashlight. Exactly. Like I I'm not that. But he goes, and he's very handy, but he goes, you know, you you always help family. I go, yeah, of course. I've I've had rentals where I've I've long you know given it to the to the family for way cheap, half price, whatever, help help them out with certain i uh an instances, but not not just money, but helping them get on their feet and doing things. So I think it's just knowing that, hey, you know, Kevin, Uncle Kevin, whatever, he you know, he was always there, gave advice, tried to help. That's the most important. I mean, again, money helps and all, but it's it's about being there for them when they're in trouble. And I can't tell you how many nephews and nieces and people have called me that have had family issues or whatever it is, and and I just try everything I can out.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:46

Yeah, and I yeah, that's that's awesome. That's awesome. If uh if your 13-year-old self could see you now, do you think uh your 13-year-old self would be proud of you and excited what you do?

SPEAKER_02 1:31:58

Oh yeah, because remember, I I I hit puberty late.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:01

So you'd be like, I can't believe you're grown and going. Yeah. Oh, I'd be so happy that I'm not five too. Trust me, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:09

I'm already winning there. Uh no, no. I I think that uh at 13, you know, I just I knew that that I worked hard, I knew that I I could be successful. You just um you just you just never know where it's gonna take you, and you don't realize until you're there with kids and wives and everything coming at you, you know, what it takes to really be able to grind and have that spirit to keep going and and do what you need to do. So yeah, I think I think I'd be pretty proud of myself. Again, the facial hair is all I needed. For sure. For sure. But he would be disappointed at at my mile time because I was pretty I I did uh I think a 540 mile back in ninth grade. Really? Yeah, now I don't know if I could do 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:57

I don't even know if I could do a mile.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:58

Exactly. I feel jarring.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:00

He would be disappointed in that part. Of course, I weighed 90 pounds.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:05

Yeah. Well, that's that's uh that's funny. All right. Um final question that I that that I think that I think I've got for you. Um Do you do you think Well, I let me actually I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you this different question. I got a different question for you. If if you could give one piece of advice to anybody starting a business, not necessarily in your industry, but anybody starting a business, what would you tell them? Let's say Blake's starting a business.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:32

Well, yeah, and I and I've told him this and and I'm he's doing it now, is find someone that's successful doing what you want to do, and partner with them, be their assistant, be a part of what they're doing. When Blake uh was in Austin and um he had the baby coming, and he was doing quite well, you know, he's doing mortgages there. He, you know, there's no family in Austin. I said, We we need you to move out here. Now the crazy part is Doug at three years old, when D when Blake was three, he said, I don't know where I'll be when you're older, but I'll hire you. Because he used to pick up Blake and take him to breakfast.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:07

No kidding.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:07

He is uh a very dynamic personality, right? So so I told him, I said, Look, you you you gotta go work with Doug and come out here, and he was able to buy a house. And but the one thing that uh that Doug told him was if you don't make 200 grand a year, I'll fire you. So that motivated him. Because of course there there's no reason he can't. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I would say that whatever industry you're in, you have to find, and Doug did this when he started. He worked with a very successful uh real estate team and he learned the ropes. You need to work with someone that knows what they're doing, that's successful. If you don't, I'm not saying you can't make it, but it makes it so much harder because you just pick up on all the little things and they'll mentor you, they'll help you with you know problems, they'll help you figure out things, but you'll watch and see why they're successful, and that will help you get to the next level. And like I said, I when Marcus, when everybody comes in, it's almost like they gotta go through basic training. You gotta go through the quick end, learn the basics, then come work for us, be on our team, learn like, okay, this is also what you can do. Expand your horizons, and then um and then you can the success is all up to you. You know, how how hard you work. The great thing about sales, and you know this, is there is no income limit. It's how hard are you willing to work to get to that. And you watch people make, you know, millions, billions, yeah, or make nothing. And they can blame themselves, they can blame whatever. The point is in sales, the sky's the limit. Yeah you decide how much you're gonna make.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:45

I I have that struggle a lot of times. And and two two factors, I think. One, there there becomes a lethargic nature to what we do, right? Kind of get to the point where you're like comfort zone doing pretty good and I'm comfortable, that sort of thing. And you gotta say, okay, I gotta pull myself back out of that, act like there's nothing, let's go after it. The other the other piece of it is whenever I start focusing on what I call the outcome, which is the money, uh, things just that's horrible. Shit tank, right? So it's one of those things where it's like, okay, don't focus on the outcome and act as though there's nothing there.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:22

You know, Jan, you bring up a great point. I had a loan, you know, it was a low income loan, maybe a hundred grand. The amount of money I made was next to nothing or nothing. It didn't matter. I want borrowers to get in the house. I would fight for him, whether it's a million-dollar house or a hundred thousand dollar house.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:37

And when the underwriter said that to me, I was like, what that means nothing to me. These people want a house, they're crying to me on the phone. They want their family to be in this house.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:45

So this, this is everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:46

Yeah. And for them to say, Why are you fighting so hard for this? You're not even making anything. I was like, is you think that's the reason I'm doing this?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:52

But yeah, no, I that's the one thing I tell my employees is I'm like, look, when we get a call from a customer with an issue, you have to understand that is their issue and it's very high priority to them. So we need to take it on as though it's a priority. Right. Can we do that with everybody? I I'm sure we fall, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:37:10

It's tough because sometimes you're but you have to think of it like just like the people that were waiting for their check. Like we had to tell them, look, you're not getting a check, but don't worry. Right, I'll send the check to the title copy.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:20

Yeah, exactly. When it closes, you will get the money. It's there. So yeah. Well, hey, I I I greatly appreciate you coming on the show. Oh, absolutely. I appreciate you. And I have admired you for years. Obviously, love playing basketball with you. I'm looking forward to getting on the pickleball court and kicking your ass. But uh everybody who comes on the show gets a gets a gift. So I'm gonna give you a gift. So this is uh uh a little glass. You've been using one tonight. We've we've had water in our cups this evening. Mine's a brown water. But uh it's been engraved by Roxink Calligraphy. Uh this is uh Kevin 2025 for when you came on. Um you're you're getting close to the last of the legacy for 25, but uh, and then there's a challenge coin there for you for it's uh APM and above par. But uh Roxink Calligraphy does the Clearp and then uh help me with the coin. So but I really appreciate you coming on.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:22

Well, thank you, God. I love you being here, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:24

I love appreciate you, appreciate your friendship, and uh it's been awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:28

It's been awesome. Well, I can't wait to see where you're at. I I'll come on on here in ten years. Can't wait to see the studio.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:33

That'd be awesome. It'll be it'll be an awesome studio.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:36

Okay. First turn, this is Kevin Kazitzki, and I went above and beyond.