Impact, Innovation & Detroit | Matt Rizik

In this episode of Slightly Less Scripted, we sit down with Matt Rizik for a wide-ranging conversation on impact, leadership, and vision.

Matt shares powerful stories from his philanthropic work saving Flint Beecher High School, how he built a tax portfolio of NBA clients, and his perspective on Dan Gilbert’s role in Detroit’s revitalization. He also gives an inside look at Rocket’s long-term strategy and what it takes to think big while staying grounded in purpose.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome back to slightly less scrifted. Today we're here with Matt Risik, treasurer of uh Rocket Companies, uh CEO of ROC 2, right? CEO of ROC, treasurer of ROC.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

I'm a board member of Rocket Companies.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Okay. And chief tax officer, too, right? Chief Tax Officer as well. Seems like a busy guy. I keep busy. Thanks for making some time today to be on the podcast. Really appreciate it. Pleasure. So we usually start off with this because we just did a tour of the building. Uh, what'd you think? First time on campus?

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Um, this is more like a college than it is a high school. It's an amazing campus for sure. And yes, it is my first time.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

I I think uh you probably have some ideas uh running in your head for uh for Beecher, huh?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yes, I'm uh helping a school up in Flint, and as I walked through here, I got all these ideas, took videos, and uh if we can try and mimic it, I'm definitely gonna do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Awesome. Let's uh let's start there a little bit. So you grew up in Flint?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Grew up in Flint, attended Catholic high school, grade school, or excuse me, Catholic school, grade school, and high school, and uh from there went to Flint U of M for two years, and then I got my undergrad and my master's in accounting and tax from Michigan State.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

How impactful was your uh time at Powers going to a Catholic high school?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

I I would say it started at St. Francis, a little Catholic grade school, and back then the church was the center of your universe. Um, but the Catholic education, we had Felician nuns then, and the Catholic education was second to none. And then powers continued that. We had Maris Brothers from New York as teachers, we had uh nuns as teachers, we also had lay teachers. But both of those really set a major foundation for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

That's uh I couldn't agree more about Catholic Central for me. So I know uh how impactful it is to go to a place where you can also practice religion a little bit too. So that's a sure, it's an important thing. Um, when you were growing up, did you envision uh what you're doing today or did you want to be something else as a kid?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

It's interesting. So I grew up in a family of seven children. My mom and dad are both Lebanese. And from the day we were born, my dad said, You will all have a profession. Um and uh you can choose any profession you want except for you. And he said that to me. He said, You're gonna be an accountant. I guess it was because I was good with numbers. So I started actually doing work at his office. He was a bookkeeper and he did tax work for a lot of the factory workers uh in Flint, which back then was like the factories in Flint were amazing, the Flint school system was amazing. So anyway, I started doing that at eight years old.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

So have you always had like a knack for numbers? I I have. It's been something I always enjoyed. Just a gift? Yes. That's awesome. It kind of reminds me of uh my grandpa a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Right. And I'll say this I had a freshman uh math teacher at St. Matt's before Powers Open. I went to a small Catholic school one year, and then brother John Bance at Powers, and those were probably two of the most influential teachers I had. Both were math teachers.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Wow. Does uh does Flint have a large Lebanese community?

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Back then it did. Right now, uh it still has a Lebanese community, and I think there's a Chaldean community that's sort of uh growing, sort of growing in there as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

How uh how impactful was it kind of growing up uh Lebanese American?

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Are you guys uh pretty still culturally uh so it's interesting, uh probably around the early 70s, the Lebanese influent came to my dad and said we want our own church. So Lebanese are Maronite Catholic. And so they did whatever they had to do. Everybody pitched in. He went to the archdiocese and we they built Our Lady of Lebanon, and every year they throw a festival, and it's probably one of the most well-attended festivals everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Yes. Okay, we have uh a similar background on that a little bit. So uh my dad helped uh start St. Paul's Albanian Catholic Church in Rochester. Yeah, so and we do the same thing, we do a festival once a year, usually 4th of July, and it is very well attended by the Albanian community. That's awesome. Yeah, very cool. Uh, I want to jump back to um Beecher a little bit. Um, for people who don't know, you um are helping out this uh school district that was basically gonna go bankrupt, right belly up and and and cease to exist, but you got back involved with Beecher?

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

How did that all start?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

It's the craziest story. It started in a locker room. Uh it was beginning of the pandemic. I read a story about Beecher entering a locker competition and lost. And I'm thinking, what the hell's a locker competition? So I called up there. Courtney Hawkins, who's now the wide receiver coach at State, was the AD, and he had just left. So I talked to the new AD, Mike Williams, and I said, What the hell's a locker competition? How do you lose? So he said, Come on up here. So Memorial Day uh 2020, I went up to see Beecher. Now, for background, I went to Powers Catholic. We used to play Beecher. And back in those days, there were four high schools in Flint, public high schools, 3,000 kids each. Beecher had 3,000. So, you know, Flint was uh the school system was amazing. It was probably one of the best school systems in the country, but that's because you know, GM was there and you know, good wages and all that. Now the four public high schools are closed, and Beecher's hanging on by a thread. So I go up there and uh tour the locker room, and in the video I sent you, the one of the coaches said nobody should have been in those locker rooms. The ceiling at the height at the field house leaks, so sometimes you had to cancel games. There's no running water in the locker rooms. The lockers are from when I was a kid, and this is in 2020. So I said, okay, we got to do something about it. So I wrote a check and I asked a few of the people at Rocket if they would consider helping out. And they all pitched in. We raised$650,000 and completely redid the locker room. So I get a call from the locker company in Dallas that did the competition. They said, We heard what you're doing. We're gonna donate the lockers, even though Beecher didn't win. So we were able to uh completely renovate the gym, now all new locker rooms, running water in the locker rooms. So the coach asked me to start going to the games. And up till that point, Beecher had won five state championships in seven years. So I started going to the games. This school of 200 kids, and they're beating D1 schools. In fact, I heard one D1 coach say, We're not coming back up here to play these guys. That April, they won sixth state championship in eight years, and then in 23, the seventh state championship in 10 years. Oh in basketball. Yeah, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

So they they probably feel on cloud nine now. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Yeah. While we're celebrating the sixth one, I learned they don't have a high school. They closed the high school that I remember. It was built in 1936, closed in 2004. They moved all the high school kids into a grade school with grade school kids. Well, parents don't love that. Yeah. So parents start pulling their kids and the enrollment starts going down. So I said, well, let's open up the high school again, the one that was closed. So I started working on it. It took me about three and a half years to raise the$20 million to reopen, to rebuild and reopen the high school. And next fall it'll reopen. That's amazing. They were on a state watch list for troubled schools. They're off the watch list now. Enrollment's up. So we're really starting the momentum to turn the school around.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Hopefully, uh, hopefully one day I can come visit and see how I would love for you to do it. Takes a look. Maybe we can even uh get some sim racing in there.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Yeah, I would love it. Um, Mayor Duggan was just there the other day talking to the students. Um, the governor has visited, but the the message here is that I couldn't just say, why isn't the state doing something? That's not gonna get done. We had philanthropy, the Mott Foundation donated$10 million, but they told me I had to raise another$10 million. So philanthropy, state government, federal government, uh, civic leaders, everybody pitched in. It was really a a group effort.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Takes a village. It takes a village. Uh funny you mentioned uh Mayor Duggan. I think, Sean, correct me if I'm wrong, is it next week he's coming in?

unknown 9:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Okay. Awesome. He's a Catholic Central graduate. I did not know that. Yeah. So he uh when you see him, you tell him Matt says hi. Yeah. I absolutely will. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Uh yeah, he's he'll be coming in. Uh we had to reschedule uh uh a few times with him too, but I'm looking forward to that. We have uh two Catholic Central grads running. Uh Mike is an independent, and then the other Mike, Mike Cox, as a as a Republican. He's also a Catholic Central graduate. So that that's uh it's kind of interesting, but it's a it's a small world sometimes. Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

So the other thing we did though, I didn't just want him to have a building. I wanted him to start having opportunities as students at Beecher. So I take him to Cleveland and we spend two days learning about the business side of pro basketball. Then we go to the game and we sit courtside, so they get some fun out of it, but they get to learn about merchandise sales, ticket sales, suite sales, so that they don't think that working for a professional sports franchise necessarily means just running up and down the court. They see everything that goes into it.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

There's a business behind it. There's a business behind it, for sure. Why why do you think uh Rocket is so heavily involved with uh with sports?

SPEAKER_01 10:35

So Dan is obviously a big fan of sports. He enjoys the whole participation in Cleveland. Um and his kids played sports, I think he did when he was younger. But really that is just one piece of a much bigger uh thing that Dan's doing. I mean, he was very successful in the mortgage business. And what he says though is it's not we we want to generate profits, but it's what you do with the profits that matters. And it's using the assets that we have to improve the community.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

So I think he's invested, I don't know, eight billion dollars in Detroit. I mean, he built Hudson's, he finished Booktower, and now we're working on the Rensen. And it's all to give back to the community. He wants Detroit to be the model city of the 21st century, and now he's doing the same thing in Cleveland.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Yeah, I mean, you you can you can see it, even I can see it from when I was a kid versus now heading downtown. You guys have done an incredible job of of building it up. I mean, it's it's vibrant now when you go.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Right. He has an expression for more than profit, which means you have to generate the profits, but you have to do something with them to improve the community you live in, and that's what he's doing.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

So how did you get uh originally involved with with Rocket? Because I think you worked at PWC before. I did.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

It was it was sort of interesting, and you have to go back, you know, I'll tell this to the people listening that people probably think accounting and finance is boring. And really, it's where you take it, where you take the things you learn. So I worked on a lot of auto suppliers my first few years at Coopers and Librand, which became part of PwC. I'm working late one night. I get a call from our LA office. There's a guy who plays for the Lakers who had a state income tax question because he resides in Michigan during the offseason. You can guess who it was, right? Magic. Johnson. Yes. Wow. So I answered the question. Next thing I know, I get a call from Isaiah Thomas. They had the same agent. He asked me to help him, so I started doing work for him. In fact, I did work for him from 86 to when I just took this job in 2012. Then I get a call from Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman, John Sally, Chuck Daly, Rip Hamilton, Chauncey Billups, Paul Gasol. Um I I actually ran a sports practice out of PWSE. Wow. When I retired, I did that for one year on my own. And then that's when Dan called because one of my clients used to do commercials for him, and that's how I met him. So Dan called and said, I want somebody to come and help me, and uh your name keeps coming up, and so I started there in 2012.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

That's kind of got to be surreal a little bit because you mentioned you played basketball, and now you have a bunch of pro basketball players calling you to help out with their taxes.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

For example, after the 89 championship, they did the parade, and then Joe stopped by the house and we had dinner together. So I mean it was just like the experiences are fun. But I'd say all this not because of that, but I took all of the things I learned working on companies and individuals that had nothing to do with sports, and said, these same rules apply to professional athletes, and this is how we're gonna run the show. And I told him you have to call me once a week. If you don't, I don't want you as a client. Because you have to understand where every dime goes of your money. Just like a business has to do a budget and follow it, so does a professional athlete. And so I took rules and the things I learned on regular uh companies and applied it to a new uh group of people.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

So what what advice would you give to uh high schoolers, these guys now nowadays they're they're growing up, they're wanting to be successful, they're wanting to do good. Uh what kind of what are like maybe three key tips that you could give a young guy for you know financial success growing up a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 14:45

A couple of things. One is whatever field you go in, be the best at it. Be the absolute best at it. I used to people would go home at 5, 5.30 when I was working at Cooper's in the tax area. I would walk around and ask for additional work. I wouldn't leave till nine o'clock. And so I my pace of learning was faster. And I decided I was gonna be the best tax person around. And so I would get calls from other op Cooper's offices, it's an international firm, asking about certain areas of the code that I just made my made up my mind I was gonna do better and know better than anybody else. And that helped. Normally to make partner takes 15 years, I made it in five. So I wasn't even 30 when I made partner. But again, it's because I decided I was gonna be the best at what I could be.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

That reminds me of uh we had uh Nick Sabin uh uh on campus a few years ago and he gave a speech to our whole school and one of the echoed something similar. It's funny how sports and business sometimes uh intertwine.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

But he said if you're gonna be a street sweeper, be the best darn street sweeper you can be.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

So when you're talking about working late, working hard, working long hours, how do you find the balance? I mean, uh to me, it's kind of amazing that you're here sitting here right now because you're obviously busy, but you still found time to do something, you know, something else. How how do you how is time management in your life?

SPEAKER_01 16:18

That was so important. When I was in college, on Saturday night or Sunday afternoon, I would literally break my week down into half hour segments and say, you know, between 8 and 8:30, I gotta be in class, 8:30 to 9, I'll finish the class, home, take a 15-minute breath. I literally mapped out the whole week. The other thing I started doing, a lot of people study for tests a couple days before. I got ahead on my work so that two weeks before an exam, I started studying.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

So by the time the test came around, I had it. You knew everything.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

What do you do for um leisure when it comes to, you know, trying to just, you know, sometimes the grind of everyday work and life can kind of get to you. What do you do to kind of decompress a little bit? What's my fun time thing? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

For one, uh, we go to Cleveland from time to time, let's say on a regular basis, and watch the Cavs play.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

And that's always fun. But I'm a big golfer now. But up until about five years ago, I was still playing basketball, but a lot of the guys retired and stopped doing it. So I'm a big golfer.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

You do some pickup games. Yes. That's awesome. We uh I'll do some pickup games with uh some of my guys here too, uh late at night. Every once in a while we run into kids or someone else trying to use the court, but it's uh it's always a fun uh fun thing to do to so my one of my favorite stories.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

I was at Paul Gasal's house. I had hired his agent. We were going up against Jerry West to max out his contract in Memphis. We'd just finished the deal. So we're having a good time. So he would challenge me in horse. So it was, you know, H O R. I had three letters, he had none, then pretty soon he had R because he was messing around. We both had S. I buried a three, his rolled off the rim. So I can say I actually beat a Hall of Famer in horse.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

In horse. I'm I have a feeling you have a lot of good stories like that. Yeah. Uh I wanted to jump a little bit into the business side of things with uh with Rocket as a as a company where it's going. I I think you said something important. I actually remember it from when we talked on Zoom, which was you know, we're we're not just for profit, but it's about what we do with those profits that really matter. As you know, as things are changing, evolving, obviously the housing industry is kind of in an interesting place right now, technology, AI. How is kind of what's Rocket's strategic vision for like the next five or ten years?

SPEAKER_01 18:51

So we were a mortgage company and we were the best at it. Okay. Um we brought in a new CEO. He's used to run TurboTax it into it, and he brought in a new chief marketing officer, chief technology officer is from Toronto. He was number one in his class at Waterloo, which is the MIT of Canada. And we last year announced that we acquired Redfin. And that's a search company. So if you want to go look for houses, you get on Redfin and it can help you find houses any area in the country. Then we bought Mr. Cooper, and Mr. Cooper's big thing is they service mortgages, meaning when you have a mortgage and you make your monthly payments, they're the ones that handle all the monthly payments. So now we acquired two companies and we've changed the whole uh home ownership, home search model from just coming to us when you need a mortgage to we'll help you find the home, we'll help you finance the home, and then we'll service your mortgage long after. And in addition, you had mentioned when we did the tour, Rocket Money. Rocket Money is an app that helps people get their finances together so that at some point they can't afford a home. So we've changed the whole dynamic from just being a mortgage company to really anything to do with home ownership.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

So A to Z from the home buying process.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Now, when you kind of look at the the housing industry and kind of I I guess for maybe the kids, uh explain a little bit how a mortgage works, how Rocket works with a mortgage. Is it direct to consumer? Are you guys going directly to people who need loans? Are you guys giving it to other retailers that sell the mortgages? How does that work?

SPEAKER_01 20:46

We do both. So sometimes there are other mortgage companies who want to use us effectively as their back room. So they have the relationship, but we do all of the um heart, you know, the paperwork, everything, uh secure the mortgage, and that's what we call our wholesale division. But we're also direct to consumer, which is something that we're number one in. And uh that means if you need a mortgage, you come directly to us, we'll show you your options, uh, explain what you need to do. And you mentioned it earlier, AI is rewriting this whole process. I'm sure it's making big bets on AI because there's a lot of repeat kind of work that you know really AI can change just like that. So it is going to rewrite the way people in the future look for homes, finance homes, and service their mortgages.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

So you guys are using it to a benefit, you guys see a future in it.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Yep. We're making big bets on it.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

That's interesting to to hear 'cause you almost the the narrative around the media right now is that there's a AI bubble. Or that there's something that it won't actually come to fruition the way we see. But it, you know, I guess me being the esports coach, I'm always going to be a little bit more tech heavy. So yeah, I I kind of we've adopted it here a whole bunch. And uh I mean, I think that that's just the next wave in terms of, you know, did a dot-com boom. I see the next thing that happens is kind of that AI boom with how is that gonna change the way we do business, and hopefully it ends up helping us all out.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

So I'll just tell you this. So kids who are thinking of going into computer engineering, it's it's a good feel. My son did that at Michigan State. He's now out in Seattle doing AI work for Google.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

And he's thinking of transferring to New York, and they'll basically put him wherever he wants. That's how big the AI uh platform is. Yeah. And he tells me you cannot believe the number of Michigan and Michigan State grads in Seattle.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

I I I really do believe it because I know uh I know those how good those schools are, and especially for for Comsci and and progressing and for for technology.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Our challenge is to try and get those kids back here and get the startups and the tech going so that they want to stay home.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

So I was gonna say this is kind of uh crossover with your with your brother a little bit in terms of what he does with with Renaissance.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

Him funding uh not startups directly, although he said I think they do a few, but trying to get um the VC funds to come here in Michigan and then spend money here in Michigan, which I think is uh an amazing idea.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Right. You had talked though about in addition, this for more than profit concept. I mean, Dan's done an amazing job in 2010 Detroit was pretty much a ghost town. And now you go downtown, it's resilient, it's considered really the world the world looks at us as like the revitalization of a of a you know city that people pretty much left out of it. So it's we had uh the uh NFL draft 780,000 people came down, we broke the record, and I think the world got a really positive sense of what Detroit's about and where we're going.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

It's kind of ironic a little bit, but today's uh 313 day. I don't know if right, I don't know if we planned that or not, but I'm gonna say we did. So uh I I agree with you cut completely, and I'm just uh uh a big Detroiter at heart in terms of of what it is. I mean, I loved going down to the to to the Joe back when I was growing up, but now to see LCA and the way they change from pistons to red wings, I just I love what's happening with the city, and uh, you know, uh you can tell there's a major revitalization going on there.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

All right. Well, Mr. Razick, I think uh that's a pretty good quick chat. And uh thank you so much for coming on, taking time. I think I definitely learned a lot. Hopefully, our kids got to learn something from you. Do you have any last words or anything you want to give to the to the students, the podcast?

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Um, enjoy your years in high school because sometimes you get up in the morning and you're like, yeah, you'll look back at these years as some of the greatest years in your life.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Awesome. Thank you very much.