Meet a Mortgage Industry Expert Turned Entrepreneur

Mortgage is supposed to feel like math, paperwork, and a few signatures. What happens when it also feels like a daily test of character? 

We sit down with an anonymous mortgage expert whose working life runs from a paper route at 13 to two decades in the mortgage and real estate world. He breaks down what he’s building right now: a call center-based revenue engine for a regional bank that targets homeowners with strong home equity but crushing high interest debt.  

We also talk about what it feels like to “start over” later in life, and how to earn trust when borrowers assume there’s always a catch.

Then we go behind closed doors on the subprime era. He shares the wild workplace stories, how incentives warped behavior, and why the industry’s public image changed so fast after the crash. 

Want to be interviewed? You can remain anonymous. Voice distortion now available. Email or Text us!

Transcript

Welcome Behind Closed Doors

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors. I'm Elsa Barbie. And I'm Don Andrews. We have been friends since sixth grade. Somewhere between a car wash job, a few questionable boy choices, and 40 years of friendship, we became the kind of people who always want to know what was really going on, including at work.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Don spent 25 years as an employment lawyer digging into workplace drama from the inside out. I built a long career in the beauty industry as a brand educator with a few TV cameos sprinkled in for fun.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

We came up in very different industries, but we have the same passion, meeting new people and asking how they got their jobs, what they love, what they can't stand, and what happens behind closed doors.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Every episode we talk to a new guest about their lived experience in the world of work. And because our guests stay anonymous, they can spill the truth without the fallout.

SPEAKER_03 0:54

We get into the choices they made, the tiny cruelties, the surprise kindnesses, and some of the moments that never make it into human resources reports.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Equal Parts informative and titillating. This show serves up all the tea while honoring the incredible, complicated, often messy work people are doing across the industries and across the map. Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors. Let's get into it. But as

First Job Paper Route Lessons

SPEAKER_02 1:28

you all know, if you've been following us for several weeks now, you know that first question that we love asking. All right, what was your first paying job?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

My first paying job was a paper out. Let's see. Gosh, I had to bend, I think 13 was the minimum age for a paper out back then. And it'd be gosh, late 70s when I did this. I guess 80, because I was 13 in 1980. So that's when I started. That was my first job.

unknown 1:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

And how long did you have that job?

SPEAKER_00 1:59

I had it for probably a couple of years. I think, and I ended up turning the route over to one of my little brothers. It was a coveted thing, right? There was an older kid in on the in the neighborhood who had the route, and he had to kind of know when he was going to graduate from high school or move on and want to pass it along and sort of let him know at church or somewhere along the line, like, hey, if you ever want to leave that route, or if you need help when you're on vacation, I'll do it. And I think that's what I did for this kid is when he was on vacation, I would fill in for him and uh and deliver his papers. But uh yeah, what a great experience because you have to get up at 5:30 in the morning to prepare. And it's like you run your own little PL too, right? You buy the papers from the newspaper company. For me, it was the Tri Valley Herald. And then you deliver the papers, then at the end of the month, you collect from the subscribers. And so your profit is from what you've already paid, the difference between what you collect and then what you pay for the papers. But along the lines, there are other things that go with that. You had to buy rubber bands for the papers, you had to buy plastic sleeves if it was raining. And I grew up in Northern California, so that was a thing. And they had bonuses too. So if you pay off your papers quick, then you got things like 10 candy bars, right? Okay, pay quick. You could get 10 candy bars. I remember that, I think that was my favorite. Or you, or if you're industrious, you're like, or you could get a free bag of rubber bands, things like that. Hand warmers. You could get the hand warmers, you put them in your pockets, and those are different things like that. But I think it was my paper was an everyday paper. It was seven days a week. I would get up and I would fold my papers. You'd take the inserts and you put them in the paper, then you fold them up, throw them in there, then you bag them up, get on your bike, and deliver them. But while I was doing it, I was folding those newspapers. My dad would be up and my mom would make breakfast for him. So we'd eat breakfast and be drinking his coffee. And he would stand at this window while I was folding these papers. I could still see him there with this, you know, it's like a red, white, and blue coffee cup, staring out the window in his 1970s leaders leisure suit, waiting for the carpool to come pick him up while I folded these newspapers, not saying a word to me. Like I wasn't even there, just looking out the window.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

Yeah, that's so cool. I didn't realize you had to buy the papers though. That seemed like a racket.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Yeah. Yeah. Here's the thing. I was 13 too. Not I couldn't legally actually be working. And so some dingling from my middle school, the vice principal, Mr. Rice, got wind of this and he thought this was a bad thing for kids. I'm like, what are you talking about? It's a big deal to have a paper out, and everybody took pride in it. And he made a big fuss about it, and eventually it got eliminated. He wasn't the only one. So then there were child labor laws that prevented kids from having those kind of jobs at an early age.

SPEAKER_03 4:43

Do you remember what you did with the money that you earned?

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yes, I do. So I was even at an early age, I was clothes horse, right? I like my things. I like certain things. I would see the older kids wearing these leather Nikes with this canvas strap around at the bottom of them. And I coveted those. And I came from a big family. There were five kids. And so we were living on a budget. And so I always wanted to use my extra money to step up from the canvas Nikes to the leather Nikes. So that was one of the things that I spent my money on. I can remember. That in posters over the Los Angeles Rams cheerleaders and things like that. Of course. Fireworks, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 5:22

Of course. I love

From Hotels To Mortgage Sales

SPEAKER_03 5:25

it. Tell us what you're doing now and then walk us from your paper route at 13 to where you're at.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Yeah, it's interesting to think about those days of delivering papers and that kind of like never-ending cycle of you're that's like the what's his name on Newman Seinfeld, the mail never ends. Papers keep coming and there's no finish line. And it's every day. I had a career, maybe 10 years or so working in the hotel industry. And highlighted that career was the I was the doorman of the Manchester Grand Hyatt downtown. And I was I wasn't part of the charter group that were hired, but I came in about a year after that charter group. So there those that charter group was still there. And it was a very tight-knit bunch of guys there. And we all we all became good friends and are still friends to this day. But that was a particularly impressionable job for me. That that started my career really in sales. And you met people in front of that hotel, and you had about two to three minutes to sell them from their car to the front desk where you drop them off. And that's where, and then I got my tip. If I either I got a tip or I didn't get a tip, right? And so I was doing that while I was finishing up school. I finished up school and I got a degree in information systems of all things because like God knows that I am so like ADD, I cannot sit and write code and sit at a desk. But I ended up, my my wife at the time worked for a company called Buy Referral Only. And what they did is that they did train realtors and mortgage people to market effectively to their current clients, to get current clients and to keep those current clients as clients for life so that they had a returning business. So the cost of marketing was amortized over the lifetime of that client, and it was a lot cheaper. So she one day heard the founder came in, he was golfing in. He was talking bragging about how great he was at golf. And she said, My husband could probably kill you at golf. And he said, I highly doubt that. What's his number? And he called me and we ended up playing and he said, You'd be great at real estate. You should do this. So that was, I don't know, that was maybe 2000, I think 2002. I got into mortgage and real estate. And really for most of my career, with a brief stint, I am part of a technology company. And I still am a part of that technology company, but for the greater part of my career, 23 plus years, I've been in mortgage and I've worked at various different divisions, I would say. I work for most of my career, I've worked directly for production home builders. And when I say production home builders, they're the people like Lenar, Shea. They're building hundreds or thousands of homes per year. So I worked directly for them, which was it's a good experience. And a couple couple things that that I liked about that. There was consistent business. One of the things that that I don't like about being a commissioned salesperson for 23 years is that it can be your income can be inconsistent. You can go through some really lean times, and that's tough. So that's what I did for 20 years. Currently I I work in a call center. After 23 years of doing mortgage over the course of the last nine months, I'm wearing this headgear and I answer incoming phone calls and I try to land these leads. And I'll be honest with you, that this was a super humbling position for me to take. But it's interesting, right? In the humility of taking this job, I got a call about four months ago from a gal who had left her position. She not voluntarily, but left her position at Lenar, one of the builders that I had worked for, and she had got hired on with the regional bank, and she asked what I was doing. And she said, That's interesting. What do you like about it? But to make a long short story long here, we've discussed about how could you create uh something similar? How could you create a revenue engine that you could bring to my regional bank and build? And so over the course of the last four or five months, that's what I've done. And beginning of this week, we did we actually agreed on terms. And so this Friday, we're going to write those up and make it solid. And I'll actually join her at the regional bank with this new revenue engine and some other things. So I'm really excited about that. We came up with the idea to focus these outgoing, what they do is they send these direct mailers and they have that they mine data for people who have a favorable equity position in their home that may have a second trusteed and that we could actually help. So we could when they call in, the idea is not about selling rate, but it's about lowering their monthly overhead and their household overhead. And then within that, we try to really focus on an on a need, right? Our ICP being right now, it's Eastern Washington, where we have people that have made pretty good money for that part of the country, but they have they may have even a two to three percent on their first, but they've taken out this huge second and it's variable and it's at 10% now. And by the way, they've got $30,000 in credit cards. And so we get in there and we look at it, and we go, okay, let me take a look to see if this is gonna work for you. We figure out that, hey, I can save you fifteen hundred dollars a month, put you in a better credit position by paying off all these credit cards and put 10,000 bucks in your pocket. How would that feel? And they're like, Yeah, that'd feel pretty good. And I feel pretty good because their their overhead's gonna go down 1500 bucks. They're gonna improve their credit position because the balances on those credit cards are gonna be remote. And it's something that that we know that they're gonna qualify and it's gonna be in a better position for them. So it's not a sell. It's it's I feel a little bit noble about doing that.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Now that you've explained it. Now, as a consumer, I hear somebody just bear with me on this one. I hear somebody like you telling me I'm gonna do this. And what's the first question that the consumer is going to ask? What's the catch?

SPEAKER_00 11:17

What's the catch?

SPEAKER_02 11:18

Yeah, yeah, but then like why all of a sudden you're gonna answer all my prayers and save me.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

So that's a great thing. So that's a great point. And if you don't answer that phone the right way, that's what you're gonna, that's the kind of that's what you open yourself up to. But when you tell them, they say, I've got this notice in the mail, tell me I don't know what it's about, and I'll tell them, hey, listen, looks like we've sent you this notice because you have a favorable equity position in your home. What my job is to do is take a closer look at your at household finances, and I try to determine whether or not there's high interest debt in your finances. I find it in credit cards, I find it in second trusteds. Barbie, I see you've got a second trusteed on here. So tell me a little bit about what I'm really interested in. What compelled you to pick up the phone and give us a ring? Tell me how you think I can best be of service to you today. And then they say, I do have some credit cards and I want to get out from under those. And then that's that's how you you get to, and I want to say direct because I'm not one of my my my favorite book right now. If you guys haven't read it, is a book called Inner Excellence. And the idea of this book is detaching from outcomes and focusing on the craft. And it's essentially me being in recovery, what that means is figure out what the next right thing to do is, do it, and give up and the rest to to God or your higher power. For me, it's the force from Star Wars. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Fine. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

So you get in that zone. Obi-Wan Kenobi.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

I hear you. Love it. So

Humility And Building A Revenue Engine

SPEAKER_03 12:53

tell us a little bit about the best parts of what you're doing now, the worst parts. What are some of the highs?

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Yeah, yeah, it's terrible for a guy in recovery, right? Because there's high highs and low lows. And if you've been in recovery for a while, you're looking for that's just some just I just want to be mellow. I just want to want something consistent that I can rely on. And I don't want these high highs and low lows. I think, I think, you know, what I first hit on what's most important to me is that I'm doing something that will actually be of service to people, that I can actually help people. That's the most important thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Because I if I can feel good about it, then I can find some passion in it. So I I like that. And I'm gonna say one of the best things about what I'm doing like right now, what was building the idea of this, putting together a performer for this, showing that what's revenue generating, that it's consistent, showing that over over the course of a lifetime of acquiring these people, you know, especially on a regional bank level, the opportunity to sell checking accounts, car loans, and develop a relationship with these over the lifetime. Cost per loan, that's the the where we figure out whether it's going to work or not, or there's actually it's actually is generating revenue. That that cost over the lifetime of that client goes way down. So I love doing that stuff. When you're building something like that and showing this little machine can work, it's awesome. And not only is it theory, but it's proven out. I really love that. You know, those are the things that I really like. The things that I don't like, sometimes I can get less humble and I feel like I've got more than these headphones and I'm 58 years old. What am I doing here? I'm not making the money I want to make right now. Makes me feel less than. I feel like, oh God, how did I end up here? What happened? Where'd I where did I go wrong?

SPEAKER_03 14:38

In my understanding right then, that basically what you have done is come up with a concept, like almost like its own business. And then you're creating you're doing you're working on the proof of concept so that you can sell it to big banks.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

So we got it, it was we got we're starting in a bank already. So it's it's actually it's happened. And so what I did is yeah, I created the concept, and then I have a strategic partner. We go in together. And then, but the idea is yes, we go in and we're gonna do this in San Diego, then we're gonna do it in Austin, and then we're gonna do it in Seattle.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

Yeah, that sounds like an entrepreneurial venture, then 100%.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Yeah, yeah. Always thinking of something fun and new to do for sure.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

Yeah. If you can wave a magic wand and change one thing about your industry that you're currently in, you can choose which of the two that you're doing, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Gosh. Yeah, I think I think I would go to that that make it less commission, more salary-based, more competitive. So the quality of person that I'm working with is higher. I just a higher that there's this difficult test, and it is difficult to get your license, your NMLS license. It's not it's very difficult to get your realtor's license too, but an NMLS license, I think the failure rate's like 70% on the first try. So it's not easy, but when you get in here, it we're just you're just not the caliber of person is has is traditionally hasn't been super high. So I think I would make it more difficult and typically make it more difficult by making it more competitive. If some there was a guaranteed salary or with less commission base, if we could figure out a way to do that to make it competitive, or there's just a higher, I don't know. I don't want to say if it's academic or if it's just it typically tech sales guys are you get into tech on a uh having spent a couple of years in there. There's some smart, well-rounded just you're I've I felt smarter just being in tech for a couple of years and then coming back and say, Oh, here we are. Okay. There's just such there's such a big difference between the two industries, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

Interesting. What's the realization rate for the calls that you're making with folks for your current business?

SPEAKER_00 16:56

So when you mean that pull through, like so how many calls do I have to take before I get, I think it's by percent. Yeah. Which is a high number, actually, is these notifications that go out are really effective. So the people that call in are generally interested, typically. So that so when you talk about qualities, they're not cheap. It's five grand a month or five grand a week for these things. So it's 20 grand a month minimum for them to do that. And the only way that that they can demand that is if they've got the data to back them up that they're effective and there's that they're predictable. Because that's the thing. You can't just say, hey, good luck, here's your data. And companies do that, they get crap data, then they're like, Oh, we'll refine it. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna put 25 monkeys on the phone and just have them hammer away.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

So, as we are workplace confessions, and this is anonymous. I want

The Wild Side Of Subprime

SPEAKER_02 17:49

to remind you.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:51

So, this is the juicy part of our get to the good stuff. Yeah, ride to the good stuff. What is the wildest, weirdest, or most unforgettable thing or things that you've seen at work?

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Oh boy. All right. This what an industry, right? Okay, holy cow. Yeah, I've seen some stuff. I have seen some stuff. What I started in the industry in 2002. And when I started, people would actually come to the office dressed up to sign their loan documents or to actually bring me paper documents. Here are my pay stubs, here are my bank statements, whatever it is. And then I would make copies of them. I would sit down, they would hand fill out a loan application, they would shake my hand and say, Thank you very much. I appreciate you considering us for this loan. And they would leave, I'd get together, I'd on my Texas instruments and put together, okay, this is what we can do. And they'd say, Okay, it sounds good. Thank God we're gonna get a loan, no big deal, and we get it going. And then a month and a half later, we would be able to close the loan. So somewhere in there, you guys know that the industry changed, and at the their companies like countrywide came out and they really revolutionized the way we did a mortgage. One one of the things that that people don't know is the community investment act or community is it community I think it is called the Community Investment Act of 1979, was the biggest was the thing that they stood on and said, look, we have to make loans that everybody can get. So the idea was they were gonna expand guidelines so that more people could get loans in a wider range of places. So all of our training that we do every year is about redlining and things that you can't do. You gotta have, you gotta make loans as available, homeownership should be available to as many people as possible. And so we've got to cross a bunch of demographics in order to do that. It means you had to expand wide guidelines to do that. So that was the initial premise of let's make some crazy loans here. Let's let's make these things make more people eligible for them. So along those guidelines, that's where it started, but it turned into things like let's buy a home with no money down, let's do stated income, stated asset, or what they call ninja loans were no income. It was yeah, just crazy stuff. Now they just you you could get anybody a loan at some point. And it was didn't even matter that there were loans where there were subprime loans that you could have 500 scores and get it, get still buy a home at 103, 103%, right? So your closing costs recovered. You literally came in with nothing. So it was nuts. So around that time when the industry started to change, as you can imagine, that these subprime loans were pushed into brokerages. So you have these broker houses where you know you we use a bunch of different investors. We go to the United Wholesale Morgage, we go to Champions for non-QM loans, we go to the loan store for different loans. That's what we how we work now. But back then it was like you had all these different choices. And so the subprime loans they sent out the farm pharmacistal pharmaceutical industry went to the strip club and they hired all these strippers to essentially sell the subprime loans. So like you'd be working on your office, and I did a paper for my whole career. I tell you if I didn't, but but there were guys in my office that did all subprime. So these girls would come in and scantily clad, and they'd be sitting down working, and then they'd come over your shoulder like, what you working on?

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Like shimmy, shimmy. But with there, I wish we could just describe what you just did at two hours.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

I did you should yeah, like boobs on your shoulder. Hey, like looking at what you're working on there.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Help me, help me. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

And you'd be like, hey, I don't know what should I be working on. And as a the thing is too, as a young male, too, hey God, how do I get into subprime? So you know, all my friends were a paper, right? So I and you basically you start by working with family and friends. So I didn't really have I didn't have a relationship with the with these subprime gals, but they were in the office all the time. And there were things like that that was just the start of it of coming in. office that and they come back on closing time with alcohol and cocaine and and I saw guys leave their wives for these gals. I saw gosh crazy stuff. Just there's in the highest ranking the highest offices of mortgage the absolute worst things were happening. Like just and and when I say worst things where there wasn't any non-consensual stuff but stuff that should was inappropriate on a huge level in terms of first of all it's just it's ethically it's wrong. But in terms of if you're running a company like hey man you're exposing the company to some real danger here. Employment law hey don't these these are the things even if you have no ethics you shouldn't be doing these from a financial standpoint because you're putting the company at risk and things like that happened. And there are guys still that I know to this day that were the top performers nationwide who cannot be associated with mortgage companies as a result of behavior that came back to bite them in in in court. Yeah. So a lot of crazy stuff along those lines.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

Wow how did that make you feel and now that you look back just these are your coworkers and now you see them acting this way.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Horrible horrible so here's the thing that I hated there was a point in time where I would go down to Dog Beach in Del Mar with my dog and my countrywide hat on and people would say hey Marty I didn't know you were at countrywide can you look at my loan and I'd be like yeah totally I'd totally love to help you and to the then two two three years or two maybe two years and I'm wearing that same hat and they're like oh my God I can't believe you work at countrywide. You're a piece of crap. I'm like yo it wasn't me it wasn't me and you saw movies like The Big Short where they depict these mortgage guys as where are they at? They're at strip clubs they're getting loans for strippers. It's funny it's so cliche it's not exactly right they were not getting loans for strippers the strippers were actually selling them subprime products in my world anyway. Look maybe in Florida they were getting strippers loans I guess I I do remember that there were a couple strippers getting loans like entertainment they had there nowadays they still do and I've seen tax returns where they filed these entertainment they had their the they get their own LLC and they get 1099s and they can actually and they make some money. Yeah it made me feel horrible and that really the contrast you think about when I felt like good about when somebody said I'm a loan officer that kind of landed well with people right back in 2002 and people came to you and they were grateful for you getting them a loan. Now they're like this guy's trying to rip me off what is he doing you even asked me what's in it for you your line in your pockets how much money are you making off this you're getting rich aren't you? No matter that's answering a phone when you think this is not clamorous.

Myths About Getting A Loan

SPEAKER_00 24:52

What would be a myth about this industry that you would love to just clear up I think the biggest myth now is that is probably around regulation that there is some a lot of times when I'm working with borrowers that they'll sell me their story. No this is not what this they'll have some explanation around their income some explanation about around a late payment or something like that. As if I had the idea like oh I know Don. So yeah I'm sure that was just a mistake and yeah listen let me let me talk to them let me give them a call hey listen I know Don. Yeah listen she's good for it we can make this happen. It's not happening. That's not the way it is anymore. It is 1,000% regulated like everything the problem we had is there was so much of that going on that it's by the time this loan which is it's basically what we're doing is we're making it into this saleable commodity for the secondary market. It's not a loan for your friend it this is a commodity that's sold in the secondary market. And there are certain quality standards that have to be in each file. Period this is not about anything other than business like it is not about personality at all. I think there's a perception out there that it is and it's like if you like you know if you know someone in this you can you know they can get you through and get you alone just not the case. And the other thing about that is is that the there's fraud somehow happening on our side where there's some way we can do we can make things happen or we're getting over on the consumer and it's just it's impossible. We're so regular the CFPB is just it's a reign of terror. Everybody's worried about audits are actually this company's actually going through a little audit in Washington because somebody there was a mistake in some of the marketing that we sent out. So now they have to go through everything. Yeah I think that's the biggest myth out there that there's this loosey goosey idea of getting a loan. It's just not the case.

Should People Still Buy Homes

SPEAKER_03 26:38

Yeah having spent as many years as you have in and around the mortgage and real estate business and knowing as you do how much this country has pushed for homeownership and still holds it up as the ideal of American living what are your views? Do you really think that people should be owning homes considering the economic climate we're in or should we be taking some other path that's a really good question.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

My feeling on home ownership and it's I hear things like current administration has come out with brilliant ideas it's like hey how about a 50 year mortgage only to find out like hey that's just nothing and values have gone so high that I think that I heard a statistic and these aren't exact figures but I remember them saying that the average cost of a home was like three or four times the salary of a teacher it like back when I think my parents were a lot or buying houses or maybe even when we were originally buying our houses 2030 years ago. I think I bought my first house in 2000 that was the case. That's probably about right. So I bought my first house for 25000 in Carlsbad 1400 square foot brand new Shea home I saved my money as a as the dormant of the Manchester Grand Hyatt for the down payment bought it on an FHA loan my let my rate was seven and three eighths that same house is over a million dollars now and that's not three times a teacher's salary ten times a teacher's salary I mean if it a teacher's what a teacher's thinking probably under a hundred grand. So the idea of that turning that dial back and making it affordable again seems impossible to me mathematically we just saw rates that were in the twos and the threes and that still wasn't really moving the needle because what happened is when you push up demand like that, simple economics demand goes up price goes up right so we've seen for the first time in in many years that the the price of of homes come down or at least stabilize for a while because there's really not the the the buyer pool has shrank and then inventory has stabilized because nobody's selling their house because they don't they don't want to go give up that 2% rate to go out there and buy a house at the same price at a six percent rate five five and a half percent rate doesn't make sense but the answer is like hey what do we do do the best we can to create a quality of life for our families and the people around us right we make those decisions Pete and I always say Pete's my best friend stay cool in the pocket when live ammunition is fine and you make the decisions that are best for you and your family. That's what you do. And if you've got a house be grateful. Yeah yeah it's interesting too yeah that's all perspective questions because you look at I know like for me I've got two boys in school and and they've got a ton of friends and they go over sleepovers and they're the accommodations in those houses can be dramatically different from what they live in. They've got a couple bunk beds and then listen we're outgrowing our we got to get somewhere but and then like they go in these houses and they're like just they're 4500 square feet right and they're like oh my God this is and this is and it's like there's part of me that goes okay I gotta I gotta get to that I got like I'm less than or they're not getting what they deserve if I'm living in this place we've got to change their accommodations. And I'll tell you what but here's the thing when I got this apartment we were living with a buddy in a big house right before that in in the backyards like something out of like Las Vegas like just an awesome backyard. Just spectacular you could when the breeze was right you could hear the ocean like you could hear the sound of the waves crashing and everything. So I get this I get but I it was time for us to get our own place we get our own place and we move to this apartment and Jackie and I of course it's for whatever reason it was these two things it was just Jackie and I and we walk in and it the department's empty and he wants this little apartment right he walks in and he's like wait this is all for us and I said and I'm like yep Jackie all for us. And he's awesome that's perspective right you're like okay like these guys are chill about it they can care less. Yeah in fact they're stoked they're super proud of it and I'm like okay that's all that really matters right I had a question if you don't mind and you don't have to answer this if you just say I don't want to talk about this.

SPEAKER_02 31:16

You

Sobriety Through A Volatile Career

SPEAKER_02 31:17

mentioned sobriety a couple of times and the industry that you're in seems to be very up and down and volatile. Are there any parallelisms in your journey of staying sober or when you first entered into sobriety as to where you were in your career that's a great question.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

I'm trying to think of where I was when I got sober so you explain me getting sober and and so I started I got sober for the first time in December 10th of 2005 that was before the crash right so I was sober for a couple of years for from so really 2006 to 2008 and then the crash happened and I got unsober and the crash happened. Now I don't know bad timing I can tell you like in there are two different kinds of things going on there just happen to parallel that way and that just but that's like the thing with alcoholics they get tight at the perk the wrong time. We need to be here for this big presentation on this night don't miss this night that's the night we drink and I'm like oh God crash a car and can't make it because we're in jail. But I did it on an epic proportion where it's like hey you really need to have your game on because the market just crashed and you you need to step up your game but I didn't I got unsober and met a girl and got her pregnant. So yeah I went through those are some pretty difficult times for me to think back when I was struggling to to hide my drinking and to get by and do the bare minimum so that I could get out and drink and try to make a living somehow I did it. That's also another thing we have this unique ability as alcoholics to figure out out a way to how to get by doing that. I don't even know how like I I'm sure I was on so many phone conversations drunk and doing so many so much business drunk. I know for sure I was I'd come into work I'd be in work up till noon and then I would leave and I'd take my laptop and I would check it I'd do pricelink.com and I would check into a hotel a cheap hotel for maybe 75 bucks and and and all I wanted to do is drink unsupervised. So I have my laptop and I'd answer emails and try not to talk on the phone too much because I was drunk. But yeah and so then I didn't get I didn't get re-sober for good until 2015. So that was a long run you know seven years there of me gosh man we called scraping along the bottom just trying to stay out of trouble. But when I did get sober on May May 15th of 2015 is my sobriety my current sobriety day the market had definitely stabilized and it was the exact opposite right everything just lined up for me. I was working doing self-generated business which was going okay in kind of a you know very competitive market but then I was approached by a production builder who had my name and I was recommended having associations in that industry to join their team and that brought a lot of stability to my income for a long period of time and it helped me level up my game and work in a larger capacity with some other product production builders.

SPEAKER_03 34:09

Great.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Has being a part of the recovery community helped or hindered your career trajectory would you say 100% helped yeah 100% helped yeah it's one of these things it's funny if you're not in recovery and I don't know you guys have to give me your perspective but I think before I was in recovery my my view of Alcoholics Anonymous of recovery people that went to rehab were the these people were ineffective people that had major problems. They couldn't deal with life they were living under a bridge drinking out of a paper bag just they got no willpower and all this stuff what's wrong with them they just can't stop drinking. And God I'll tell you what the people that that I know in the recovery no way pretty much I would say 80% of my closest friends are all in recovery. And these guys are the highest producing in their fields the most effective and I would say this too the most ethical and that's the thing for me that's a big deal is for to my best friend Pete learn more about running my business and how to behave with my clients sitting shotgun listening to him on the phone talk to his clients walk away from deals because it didn't make any sense for the client and but hey you go to go these guys can help you. I can't help you it was that kind of detach from the outcome and focus on the craft attitude that was very attractive to me. And it and part of being in recovery is being comfortable in your own skin and when you behave like that it's pretty easy to be comfortable.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

Full circle you went from tossing out newspapers delivering newspapers to what you do now.

Persistence Learned The Hard Way

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Any skills that you learned back then that you are like I am so glad I had that job because it's helping me now yeah for sure yeah absolutely and for immediately persistence and determination I grew up in Livermore California it's in Northern California. And as I mentioned I made a point to say this was an everyday job there was no day off we delivered the paper seven days a week so you had no day off it never ended. I got up at 5 30 every morning crazy it was crazy and I was 13 think about your 13 year old you're getting up that early impossible impossible and the whole rain sleet and snow thing it would be pouring rain right it would be pouring rain and you just had to get up and you had to do it right and here's the deal too like on Thanksgiving maybe Thanksgiving at Christmas the the newspapers would be like this thick they'd be like a log and it'd be so heavy and I remember I'd I'd drop one and then I'd lean over to get one and then the thing would strangle me pull me off my bike yelling and like oh my God you know so bad how many sprinklers I drove over and broke my God and and or threw papers on the roof and had to get on the roof somehow really quietly and pulled the paper off you could do a movie about it. But the thing is just like you never gave up and you just kept doing it kept because this is part of life. It wasn't suffering this was an honor that you had this job it wasn't suffering. And if you thought it was suffering you'd get the wrong idea about what you're doing. You know and it's that idea today is like you just you sit up and show up and you be where you're supposed to be and you do the things that you're supposed to do and everything's gonna work out. And again that that speaks to that whole idea nobody's trying to we're not here to like try and use some sort of Jedi neuro linguistic trick to tell if we say this they'll say that they'll agree. No BS you do not do that. We're here to educate people and see if we can help so anyway that part about my paper on that persistent determination is something especially salespeople.

How To Break Into Mortgage

SPEAKER_00 37:50

Yeah yeah if someone listening is interested in going into your business or your field what would you recommend that they do I would recommend that they and this is the way you find your sponsor in AA too is to go around and you interview people and you figure out who's got what you want. And who's moving through a life with a a grace and dignity that you admire who's moving through their business in that same way. And take some time to observe people and ask people what they think who should I talk to you ask people that you respect or people that I have like your parents or someone else who who's experienced in doing a refinance or a purchase loan or how is your experience with the guy you work with tell me a little bit about them and can you give me their number I want to call them and ask them some questions.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

So that's what I would recommend what what do you do as far as self-care when the going gets tough?

Self Care When Money Gets Tight

SPEAKER_02 38:45

What you can take it on either job wise personal however you want to answer that.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Yeah great question great question and honestly it's been a tough time for me over the course of the last six nine months financially having to really watch every penny and that's one of the things for us for guys in recovery those kind of pressures are real real precarious and we have to be careful with those things because they can spiral out of control and we can get this like confirmation bias or I knew I was I knew then I knew I was less than and not enough. This is data to support that right so these are the kind of things that we do is is really focus on what we're grateful for. Pretty easy right pretty easy we mentioned when I wake up I see my friend walking down the street right and they're good friends. I wake up in in a warm house and Jackie's asleep and I know he's fine, right? He loves me I'm zero God one person likes me it's Jackie will always like me. But I would say what are the things that I actively do in those times as exercise is big. We have this saying amongst the crazy dudes that I hang out with in recovery run till the feeling goes away. Of course we are also the guys that won the masters division in Ragnar, the 200 mile race from Coronado to Huntington Beach and there was a lot of cussing and stuff and going on in that 200 miles I will tell you that in the middle of the night lost and that kind of stuff. But run till the feeling goes away is one of our motto one of the things that that I've discovered recently that has been awesome and I've talked to Don a little bit about this I'm I highly encourage it to try it at least is breath work cold plunge followed by sauna jacuzzi whatever you want but it's been it's really worked for me particularly that breath work cold plunge combination has been super good. But I'm I think you know what we're going through in as humans is all we really have is the daily reprieve contingent upon the maintenance of our spiritual condition. That's a direct quote from the great big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that's all we really have. And maintaining that spiritual condition whether it's through prayer or meditation or however you connect just connect on a regular basis that's super important.

SPEAKER_02 40:57

But

Final Thanks And How To Share

SPEAKER_02 40:58

thank you once again for being so vulnerable for all your personal and your professional life and the trials and tribulations that you've shared with us today. And with that you have officially joined the ranks of the brave and of the bold thank you.

SPEAKER_03 41:13

Thank you for having me that's it for this week's confession we've laughed cringed and maybe questioned our own career choices.

SPEAKER_02 41:23

Big thanks to our anonymous guests for keeping it real and reminding us that behind every job title is a story worth telling if you've got a workplace confession of your own we're all ears hit us up at our email address.

SPEAKER_03 41:35

And don't forget to subscribe rate and share your support helps us keep the secrets flowing. Until next time keep your badge clicked your coffee strong and your stories wild this is Workplace Confessions behind closed doors