Who's Responsible for This Decision?! Leadership Thinking with Melissa Peregord

Today on Ain’t My First Mortgage podcast, Skip interviews Melissa Peregord, principal of Secord Consulting, about her mortgage and growth background and how she helps small to mid-size companies solve stagnating revenue and go-to-market challenges. Melissa shares her 12-year Rocket Loans experience spanning origination, capital markets, secondary marketing, and director of bank relations managing top investor and money-center bank relationships. 

She explains her move from C-suite roles to consulting after seeing how boards and CEOs can block strategy execution. She and Skip discuss leadership decision-making, balancing short-term vs. long-term thinking, and avoiding comfort-based delays by assessing reversibility, whether problems are metastasizing, who is impacted, and what information is actually needed. Melissa emphasizes diagnosing core problems versus symptoms, aligning incentives across sales, ops, and client success, and planning changes with a six-month gauge plus 30/60/90 milestones. 

Episode Highlights:

00:00 Welcome and Setup

00:17 Meet Melissa Peregord

01:12 Rocket to Consulting Journey

02:27 Why She Went Solo

04:21 Short vs Long Term Decisions

06:19 A Practical Decision Framework

10:02 Growth Consulting and Root Causes

15:18 Systems Over Blame

16:34 Incentives and Team Alignment

18:44 Common Client Challenges

23:36 Six Month Results Timeline

25:31 Contact Info and Wrap Up 

#MortgagePodcast #MortgageIndustry #MortgageLeadership #GrowthStrategy #BusinessDevelopment #DecisionMaking #ExecutiveLeadership #CLevel #Consulting #RevenueGrowth #GoToMarket #SalesStrategy #Operations #ClientSuccess #KPIs #OKRs #IncentiveAlignment #MortgageLending #RocketMortgage #QuickenLoans #CapitalMarkets #SecondaryMarketing #NonQM #Servicing #PrivateEquity

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Yeah, that's right, we're back, and this ain't my first mortgage podcast. Welcome to the show where we discuss all things mortgage sales, industry news, interviews of the top mortgage professionals, and more. Strap on in, enjoy the ride, and welcome to Ain't My First Mortgage Podcast. Melissa, welcome to Ain't My First Mortgage Podcast. How are we?

SPEAKER_01 0:34

We're doing great. Appreciate being invited to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Absolutely. My pleasure. My pleasure. I'm really excited to have you. It's going to be a great conversation today for the listeners andor viewers out there who don't know you. Take a second, introduce yourself, tell who you are, what you're all about.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Sure. My name is Melissa Perigord. I'm the principal at Seacord Consulting. The company is named after the lake that my cottage is on, and it's my happy place. And that's what I have found in consulting. After 27 years in business development roles across three different industries and holding chief growth officer roles, I come to the cottage to decompress. And that is the feeling that I have found in consulting. And so I named it after the lake.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

I love that. That's a fantastic segue, by the way, to the from one to the other. So you mentioned that before we kind of get into the meat and potatoes of it, you mentioned that you know you've been cheap growth officer, you've been in some different industries. Share with everybody your background in mortgage specifically.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Yep. So I started in mortgage with Rocket, then quicken loans, thinking that I would just work as a mortgage banker, as Rocket calls them, or loan originator, for a couple of months, maybe up to six months, as I found my next real job. That led to an almost 12-year career with Rocket, spanning mortgage origination, capital markets, and secondary marketing. And my final role within Rocket as director of bank relations, where I served as chief conductor of Rocket's top 20 bank, primarily investor bank, money center bank relationships across Dan Gilbert's family of companies. And from there, I wanted to see how I could use my experience to help smaller clients, maybe Series A B funding, because they had a lot of, I've seen a lot of different ways to accomplish growth goals in different industries. And I thought it could really be helpful there. And I enjoy helping.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

I love it. I love it. So I like to ask this of all my guests that I didn't tell you about this ahead of time, but I'm gonna ask you about it anyway. I like to ask this of all my guests who have done that shift from you know corporate America, you know, to self-employment. And there usually happens right around the same time for most people. But you know, you and I, this is a similar age uh kind of thing. You know, what was it or was there a tipping point for you that they said, you know what? I just feel I feel like this is what I need to do.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yes, there was what when you move into like a C-suite role, there's only one person plus a board up the chain. Sure. And I found that you're really hamstrung if that board or if that CEO won't allow you to enact your strategy that you've been hired to develop. And in that, I said, listen, I've got feedback for CEOs, I've got feedback for how boards would think. Why don't I test my own hypothesis or hypotheses within my own business? I felt pretty confident that I could figure out the, you know, kind of the nuts and bolts and the filing for an S-Corp and opening a business bank account, which was also interesting. And I have found that I am for the first time in a very long time feeling just so content and excited about every day that I work on this and it and that I work with a client. Yeah, yeah. It just connected, it just clicked.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

Yeah, and that's very similar to me, too. I mean, you feel called to do it. So awesome. Well, let's go ahead, let's go ahead and dive in because as you know, this the these episodes only last so long. So I'll be sure we get some good takeaways here. You and I were talking off off recording about leadership and some of the challenges that we've seen, both you and I, over the years, especially when it pertains to short-term versus long-term thinking and leadership approach and decision making and all the all these things. I'm just gonna open up that big general can of worms to you and let you kind of just start going off on that. All right. Because I know you see you see the ton just like I am, and I want you to share what your thoughts are.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

So, as I told you before we started recording, I once I found out I was gonna get to be a part of your podcast, I really spiraled into like kind of deep dive through all of the experiences that I've had throughout my career and other experiences that I've learned about via my network. And as it pertains to short versus long-term thinking, I, you know, I don't know that gets handled systematically as I believe it should be. I think it tends to be a is this comfortable for me to make this decision now or not? Like judgment. I think that there are benefits and drawbacks to both ways of making a decision, depending on that particular thing that you're deciding on. And for me, the biggest concern you need to look at is who's left holding the bag if you wait.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

If it's you in your role, that's fine. But if you are going to impact your clients, your team members, your family, you are then avoiding making a decision for your own comfort.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

And that is not a solid decision-making strategy. So, you know, I thought about well, how should you act? What would a decision-making strategy look like? And thought about a couple different categories that that I consider, although I hadn't formalized it in my mind, but what's the reversibility of the decision? If you make a decision today, how easily can you reverse it? If you cut off a tie with a client, if you are, if the problem is metastasizing and you're scaling into negative revenue if you wait, like you have to consider a couple of core functions of that decision. So is it reversible? Is it metastasizing? Who's left holding the bag? And if you're waiting to gather more information, have you identified specifically what information you need? Or are you just kind of hoping that more information will come in? Because then you're avoiding making a decision.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Yeah. So hope is not a strategy, obviously, right? That's one of my favorite.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Hope is often a strategy. Hope is not a good strategy.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

That's a very good clarification. That's right. Yes, all too often it is used as a strategy, but it should not be. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

So I mean, do you see similarities? Like, are there other categories? Are there situations that you've had where you've seen it kind of play out where the decision doesn't go through like a rigorous process, particularly when it really actively impacts the future of the business and means?

SPEAKER_02 8:09

I've seen it both ways. I've seen more of an impulsive style, which, you know, which again, granted, not every decision needs to go through. Right. Right. But for our for context, what we're talking about are larger overarching personnel strategy, implementation decisions, not hey, you know, which copy machine do we need to buy? That's not what we're talking about today. So, but I think there's a fine line between impulse and over anal overanalyzation. And but the thing is that for major decisions, I think that all too often, not not always, but I see too often that leaders go with their gut for one reason or another, be it comfort, time, lack of understanding of the problem, if they and they have to say, oh God, well, if I'd known this, I wouldn't have I wouldn't have done X, Y, or Z. You know, and sure. So so, you know, there has to be a middle ground, right? So what are you seeing as that good, hey, let's start making decisions intentionally instead of, you know, we don't have to get a foam's group together for every single decision, but we also don't have to just go right off the cuff every time. What are you seeing?

SPEAKER_01 9:18

I think in any decision, you have to understand the implications and the gravity of the decision being made. And it and if it's about do we use turquoise or EL 105, I don't know. Some probably marketers feel that's a grave decision to make, but determine the criteria that elevate something to a systematic decision-making approach. Can you identify what success looks like? Can you clearly articulate the problem? Do you know who's impacted by the decision one way or another? That shouldn't take long. If it takes a long time, you don't understand the decision. And you don't understand the downstream impacts of taking one course over another. So I would say the first thing you need to do is decide which decisions even qualify for that systematic approach. It doesn't have to take a long time, it doesn't have to take a committee, define who is impacted, who needs to be involved, and keep that group as small as possible. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's what I do in general. Well, that's different.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

I want to frame that now in the context of growth because that's what you consult on is hey, let's say we want to do more. Okay. And yeah, and you do it in a different way, a little bit different scale than what I do, but we're both in the growth business, okay? And so what is it that that you say to leadership? It says, you know, if they're deciding to uh either bring you on or implement a strategy that you suggested after they bring you on. What do you recommend? Because yeah, or I guess this two-part question. What do you see most of the times for that decision-making process? And then how often do you have to give recommendations and say, y'all may want to rethink how you do this?

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 11:07

I think it's probably that's a very complicated answer, but I won't throw that big general one out to you.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Yeah, you know, for me, I regularly have to give recommendations that are different than the current course of thought about how they were planning to handle something. And I attribute that mostly to businesses trying to solve symptoms instead of core problems. They haven't identified the core problem, but they're like, oh, this over here is the reason this whole thing isn't working. But the thing over here is one of a myriad of symptoms of a core problem. And so you can solve a symptom, you can put a whole bunch of time, waste a whole bunch of people's energy to solve one of the symptoms. You still have the core problem festering unaddressed.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

And so that's what I do. I refocus. I when I'm looking at a business.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

And that's a hard conversation. That's the hard one. Because I mean a lot of me, I see a lot of people talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Which can be easier. I'm less work. I try to get real clear on their goal, right? And I get try to get real clear on the why. Like what happens if status quo, what does status quo look like, you know, six, twelve, eighteen months down the line? If you do nothing. Now, what does it look like if you make some changes? And so I try to see if they're going to be open, if they're looking for validation that every decision and everything that they've done is perfect. I'm really a terrible fit as a consultant because I don't want to be paid to tell somebody that they're perfect. I want to get in there and find where are the gaps, where, you know, where are things going wrong? What is the core problem and how do we address it? And I'm careful to address it from a systems approach and not who is screwing things up, but what in the system is deficient and leading to undesirable outcomes. The business will make whatever decisions they want. So I'll say, here's what here's what success looks like. Here's the system that will produce that success. And I let them determine if the players they have in those positions are getting those things done. Like I'll build KPIs and OKRs and I'll do all of that. And if they're not hitting those metrics, I'll advise they make some changes.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

But I won't tell them who. I don't focus on the people, I focus on the system, which removes a lot of the pain of the conversation. I'm not saying you made that decision wrong. I'll ask a lot of questions. Like I think talking too much early on in an engagement is a liability. I think questioning and deep questioning, well, why? You know, what do you envision? Just asking smart questions about it. And usually the leader will come to the same place that I'm at on their own, just by me uh revealing what they do know and what they are aware of, and maybe what they might be missing. And somebody told me recently, and I wish I could attribute it to the right person, but they're like, you can't read the label, you can't read the soup label from inside the can. And I'm like, that is perfect because people don't need to feel ashamed of not having their eye on every single thing and getting everything right. You get distracted throughout your day. You've got to pivot, you've got to be agile, especially when you're a small to mid-sized company. You got changes coming at you all the time, you're redirecting teams. It becomes harder to get that broad overview. It's a lot easier for me to come in, pick things apart. And this is not a sales pitch, but I like to come in and really look at all their materials, all their documentation, their PL, their, you know, their staff. What are their job descriptions look like? Do they have job descriptions created? You'd be surprised many times the answer is no. The answer is no. And so I get really excited to help. And I think they can feel that excitement as opposed to judgment. But yeah, it you have to be very careful when when implying that things had potentially gotten off course and had been off our course for a while.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

Yeah. So one of the things, of course, we're gonna have the symptom versus the cause. That could be a separate conversation by itself. One of the things I do want to ask you, though, is a lot of times organizations, especially ones that have that that say, hey, look, we need help doing X, Y, or Z, right? Where you come in or I come in, whatever. A lot of times, if you ask a question like, okay, so where do you see things getting derailed, or where do you see you know the roadblock? And they oftentimes will point to a specific person. Yes. And like you said, that is not a recipe for success because I guarantee you that more times than not, and correct me if you see something different or if you disagree with me, more times than not, if you were to sit down with that person that has been identified as what's in the way, you're probably gonna say or walk away from that saying it's not them, it's what their role in, how the constraints in which they operate have been established. That's really the problem. Do you mean is that a fair statement?

SPEAKER_01 16:41

I see a lot of I see a lot of people in roles that aren't designed for them. Sure, sure, yeah. So I was going to do that. But I generally think that's a fair statement. They're not set up to succeed. And this brings up another really important topic. A lot of what I see isn't hitting their numbers. Ops and sales are fighting. All right. How many times have you heard that? Well, because you've not set up incentive structures that incense collaborative wins. Right. Everybody's fighting for uh credit for a deal getting through. Ops is like, I get no credit, but I'm the one who did the the deepest discovery and implemented this solution. Client success is like sales screwed this up on the front end. I have no idea what we just sold them or how to maintain this client going forward because they set crazy expectations.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Everybody, sales is like, I sold this, I get the cap for it. You can really mitigate a lot of that with incentivizing teams toward the same goal. So they all win when they when you bring a client in and they all get credit, financial and public.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

And understanding how what they do, no matter how menial impacts the big picture. I think it goes a long way to adding value. That's really smart comments and what they do, you know?

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Yes, that's very smart. A lot of people don't understand the value to the organization. And I think they feel underappreciated when they don't get credit and don't understand their value. And they may think their value is something other than what it is, like or worse, the organization is such a good comment. You know, it's well worse, they don't care, and then you've got an employee. You know, you can't do much with an employee who doesn't care after you've tried to make them care and they still don't care. So but yeah, I mean, there's and there's also a difference when you inherit your team versus whether you hire your team. And I've had the privilege of both hiring my team and inheriting its teams, and that's a very different feel for the team, also.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

For sure. Yeah. Okay, I want to shift gears a little bit. So tell me what are the most just give me one or two, most common things that you get approached to come in and assist with, you know, you know, as far as you know, clients reach out and say, Hey, Melissa, I really need help with X, Y, or Z.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Failing to grow, stagnating. So after a period of good growth or a good time in the market, where you can easily say, I'm responsible for our success in a good market, right? The market's largely responsible. If you're responsible for your success in a good market, you're responsible for your failure in a bad market. You're responsible as the end of the story.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

I love that because I point that out all the time. It's so true.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Yeah, you can't only want to be responsible when the market when it's good. So we came through COVID. People were doing crazy amounts of business all throughout the mortgage industry. Tech was being adapted at an unprecedented scale because they were forced to, you know, implement these lost MIT programs and take client, you know, incoming requests and forms. And how do I do this and how do I do that? And it really kicked off kind of the tech thing. I think it moved faster than people were ready for. They bought things they didn't know how to use or that weren't fully developed.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

They were coming off a high of revenue and having scaled up, followed by kind of a precipitous rate environment. Well, the rates went up, but that really slowed business. So I'm finding a lot of people didn't hedge that very well, then didn't really foresee that. Some companies went out and bought a bunch of servicing, like you're seeing now, but could they have done that sooner? Yes. Could they have branched in and on QM sooner? Yes. And gotten those platforms and infrastructure up. So I don't go back and say, well, you should have done this. I say this is what this is what I this is what should get you X, Y, and Z, which is your goal. But I see a lot of concern over stagnant growth or decline in revenue, especially as I've been contacted by companies who want to sell. And they're not in a position to sell. They don't look valuable. Not because they're not valuable, because they haven't thought about their business and accounted for it and had the long term contracts and had the auto renewals, you know, written in. But they don't think at their they don't think of their business from an investor standpoint, which I can do. And so that's that's more for a realtor, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:55

You know, I mean it's like what? It's like staging your home for sale and and giving it your facelift. And make it sellable. If you don't have the first thing then that a realtor is going to tell you, hey, you got to get this thing, you know, a little makeover here first. Then you're selling. So this is the same thing on a massive scale.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

You're right. Yeah, you're exactly right. So I see some of I work with a lot of small to mid-size companies because that's my favorite.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Yep, same.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

And I like the tech companies because they tend to have the tech piece nailed down, but don't know how to approach their end user and their client and don't have sales experience. I can really help there. And so what I see is with our growth has stagnated. We are tech people who don't know how to sell, but we have a fantastic product and we're ready to go to market. And then I have, we're gonna, we're hoping, you know, PE is gonna buy us in 18 months. What do we need to do? Right. And that's what I've seen so far. I haven't owned, you know, I haven't had this consulting business. I just started it in January, and most of my first couple of months were administrative.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

So good.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

It's so exciting. It's a little nerve-wracking to be a business of one. And, you know, I have my own decision. So I get to test, like I said in the beginning. I think I, you know, as a consultant, you come in and you can pretty easily play out the patterns that you're seeing. You can see how things end. You're like, oh, I know, I know how this ends. I've seen it and this is wires Dwayne a million times. But I can't, but reading your own soup label is a whole different story. Managing your own pipeline, timing the engagement so that you're not robbing one engagement to start another. Like that, you decide who you are as a consultant, and then every decision you make about building that business has to flow through that filter.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

That filter, yeah, 100%. So that's good stuff. So what one last question for you? And this is gonna be a very broad one. So you may you know feel free to answer it how however you like. Whenever you go into an organization and you start giving your recommendations for changes in strategy, let's say, oh, overall market strategy, how long do you typically tell them, like, look, we're gonna we're gonna give this at least X amount of time to see the results before we shift into a different approach or tweak this at all? You know, obviously I know that will vary based off what it is, the scale, that kind of thing, all things being equal. How long do you typically give a change before you need to adjust it?

SPEAKER_01 24:37

I always gauge it six months. My first gauge is six months. They're depending on the change, if they're going to slow down the build of one SaaS solution and develop an idea, yeah, that's definitely going to be longer than six months. Although we can define what needs to happen in those six months to make that bring that to market sooner than later. Right? Like do this product brief first before you start building this thing. It six months to me is a good gauge. And then I build out monthly objectives and results, and I'll set meeting structures for them internally to gauge those milestones. Where are we at with this? And if they're trending wrong, sometimes they'll engage me for hourly to come in and say, hey, this we've hit a wall here. What do you recommend? And then maybe we change that strategy a little bit or we rethink it. You know, again, short versus long-term thinking is what your problem is a symptom or is it a core problem?

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

But yeah, I find that six months is good. I do 30, 60, 90s also, but assume it's gonna take at least six months to see the full effects.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

I love it. I love it. Okay, so we have reached the end of our time together today.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Start it. I know we're just getting started.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

All right, so Melissa, anybody wants to get in touch with you? Where should they go? What should they do?

SPEAKER_01 26:04

The Ccord Consulting on LinkedIn, my phone number 313-600-1047. That's my business number. Or Melissa Paragord, M-E-L-I-S-S-A-P-E-R-E-G-O-R-D at ccordconsulting.com. And it's S-E-C-O-R-D. I love it. Consulting. I don't know if you wanted quite that much of detail.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

No, I did. I did. Because I mean I'm going to put all your content info in the episode promos. I'm going to make sure that's a good thing. Great. Okay. Everybody knows how to get a hold of you. So that's good.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, Melissa Paragorge. From there you can find everything that you need to know.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

I love it. I love it. Well, Melissa, thank you so much for coming on the show. And I got a feeling we'll be having more of these conversations going forward.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

I really appreciate you having me, Skip. It was so much fun. My pleasure. See you later. Thank you.