00:00:13 - Mike Mills
Everybody, to all my resilient real estate professionals out there.

00:00:17 - Mike Mi
So if you're listening to this, then.

00:00:19 - Mike Mills
That means you most likely survive 2023. And by the way, that is no small feat. So pat yourself on the back a little bit, because there are many out there that did not. But welcome back to the Texas Real Estate and finance podcast. I'm your host, Mike Mills, a mortgage professional here in the heart of Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. And today we're going to look at how 2008 and what we're going through right now are very similar in a lot of ways, but also very different. You see, when markets shift dramatically like they have, how we did business typically will not translate into changing markets. How you did it before is not going to be how you need to do it going forward. So you'll ask yourself, that sounds great, Mike, but what does all that mean and how do we change? Because it's way easier to say it than it is to actually do it. And you know what? That is 100% absolutely true. So just to say you change your mindset and have great aspirations for success is just basically lip service. You have to have an actionable plan on what you can actually accomplish. So how do you actually do it? What are the steps? Is it even possible? Well, today we're going to answer all those questions and hear it straight from the horse's mouth. Someone who survived the worst market that we've seen in real estate and managed to come out the other side alive and also thriving. So it's time to tune in and take a few notes. But before we get started, as always, we're really starting to gain some traction here on my little podcast experiment. So I started this over a year ago, and we're really starting to move along pretty well. So please share this with your network. Like the show. Subscribe. And if you really want to be my best friend, then drop me a review. I want to hear what you guys think. Give me ideas. Let me know what you want to hear about. Give me some topics that we can, some guests I can interview because I'm here because of you guys. And I want to tackle topics that you want to hear. So help the old bald guy achieve his dreams, will you? All right, so let's get started solving all your problems. Realtors and lenders. So my guest today is CEO of Mike Mills Mortgage and Finance, Aaron VanTrojen, and he is going to solve all of our problems today. Right, Aaron?

00:02:14 - Aaron VanTrojen
I will certainly try. Thanks for having got it.

00:02:17 - Mike Mills
You got it. Sorry. I'm really leading you into a lot of expectations here, but I want to make it as uncomfortable for you as possible. Anyway, I appreciate you coming on and chat with me for a little bit. I know you have a very busy schedule, so thanks for popping on with me. But before we dive into everything about Geneva and how you got to where you are, I do want to start with just something really simple. As far as, and I know it's on everybody's mind, is 2024 is here. Thank God we're out of 2023. That was not a lot of fun, but we do see improvements coming from this year, but it's not going to be the magic pill that maybe everybody thinks it is. So what do you think, and what do you see for this year and what's on the horizon for the market as a whole.

00:03:00 - Aaron VanTrojen
Not to be doom and gloom? I think one of the things that made us as successful as we've been over the last two years is that I've led with reality and facts where the industry has been overly optimistic and blindly optimistic for a very long time. I think going into 2024 on very much the same course as they've been on in the last two years, always calling for this started in 2022. They were calling for rates to drop by the end of 2022, and then that got pushed to 2023 and obviously didn't come. And it was always bewildering to me that they continuously called for these rate drops in volume increases in the past two years, because the Federal Reserve has been telling us since 2021 that that wasn't going to happen. And since the Federal Reserve has control over the interest rates and ultimately what's going on in the economy, I would think that it would be the smartest move just to listen to them. And that's exactly what I did. It's not that I was smarter than anybody else. The Federal Reserve gave us the playbook for the next few years in 2021, and I followed it. I think that playbook is still in play. The industry has been calling for as many as seven rate cuts this year, which is by all means is possible. Sure, I think that is possible, but it would take a radical change in direction of our economy. In order for that to happen, some.

00:04:33 - Mike Mills
Sort of black swan event would have to occur.

00:04:35 - Aaron VanTrojen
Yeah, and certainly that's possible. I mean, there's a lot of variables. It's a global economy, and so you never know when that's going to happen. Nobody foresaw the pandemic in 2020. Not to say that there's a pandemic coming, but you know that there's all these outside factors that are going to influence what's going to happen to our market. But given the information that we have today, again, the Fed is still holding on to higher for longer. The Fed does anticipate cutting rates this year, but we're only 18 days into the year, so that's not an imminent thing.

00:05:11 - Mike Mills
Yeah, everybody's saying March, but I don't know. We'll see.

00:05:15 - Aaron VanTrojen
Yeah. And again, it is possible that it is going to happen in March, but again, based on the data and information that we have today, there's nothing indicating that that should happen in, you know, the economy is still hot. CPI missed to the upside. PCE was flat.

00:05:34 - Mike Mills
Retail sales came in hot.

00:05:36 - Aaron VanTrojen
Yeah, retail sales is hot. Jobs are hot. So as long as those numbers stay above where we anticipate them to be, the Fed's not going to move, right?

00:05:49 - Mike Mills
Yeah. They're not going to change anything unless they have to.

00:05:51 - Aaron VanTrojen
No. And that doesn't remember the Fed's controlling short term rates, not long term rates. They do typically trend together, but that doesn't mean between now and March, even without a rate cut, that we will not see interest rates start to slide. That's going to be highly dependent upon the stock market. If the stock market all of a sudden gets really nervous that we're going into recession, people could bail out of the stock market, dump their money into bonds, and we could see long term rates start to trickle down before the Fed does anything.

00:06:28 - Mike Mills
At least right now, there aren't a lot of financial indications or indications in the economy and how it's performing right now that would indicate that they're going to make big changes or sweeping changes because the numbers have been great or good. And I know there's layers to it. Like the jobs report is one. For example, the recent report that came out showed that we did add a lot of jobs to the economy. But there was something like, I remember reading, it's the largest amount of full time jobs that were lost. We lost like one and a half million full time jobs. We picked up almost a million part time jobs, which is the largest increase in part time jobs that we've ever seen. And then we also increased, it was like one and a half million people that were working two jobs, which was also one of the largest increases they've seen. So there are cracks in all this stuff, but as long as the data keeps coming back positive, or even the retail sales. Right. Retail sales were great, but you also see credit card debt at the highest level that it's ever been. So are people just living the lifestyle still? And we're coming out of the holidays. All that stuff remains to be seen. And I think a lot of what's going to happen in the first quarter of this year will probably dictate where we're going to see a lot of things head for the rest of 2024. Do you agree with that?

00:07:42 - Aaron VanTrojen
Yeah, without question. And again, there's going to probably be a lot of volatility in the rate market before the Fed does anything. We are in a transition, an economic transition. A rate hike is highly unlikely. And I do think that we absolutely have a slowing economy. It's just been very resilient and not slowing as fast as everybody anticipated, especially due to unprecedented aggressive rate hikes.

00:08:09 - Mike Mills
Yeah, well, I've had a theory recently, especially about our human beings understanding of time and how it works, because we're in this social media driven environment to where everything's right now, right now, right now. If we want to see something, we can find it in 2 seconds. When we watch stuff online. I can't even get my kids to sit through an entire movie. But with that comes it's kind of a warped perception of time. So when someone says, hey, the economy is trending down, or, hey, these things could happen, it's like if it doesn't happen in a month or two months, then people just move on because, well, then it's not going to happen. And everything in the economy takes a lot of time. None of this stuff happens overnight unless you have, like we talked about one of those black swan events, like we had in 2008 with the financial Cris, with Lehman brothers and all that. That kind of kicked that whole thing off, or what we had with coronavirus, that kind of kicked all that stuff off at that period. But if you don't have something like that, then you can still be trending in a negative direction, but not have everything fall off a cliff overnight. It takes time. Yeah.

00:09:13 - Aaron VanTrojen
And I believe that when it does shift, when we actually see the decline, it will probably be rapid. And the Fed might be slow. They're always slow. Historically, not just this Fed, but historically, the Fed's always slow to react. And it's also easy to throw stones at the Fed for not reacting fast enough. Right. Because we're all so much smarter than the most brilliant financial minds on the planet. Right? I do think that we will see an increase of volume this year over last year, and let's put it this way, the NBA thinks a 25% increase in volume. They've been largely incorrect for the last two years. But even if it is a 25% increase in volume, which I'll take all day long, does that really move the needle? So I always bring that up from a global standpoint. For the industry, yes. For a company, yes. For an individual loan officer, an individual real estate agent, does a 25% increase in your business move the needle?

00:10:11 - Mike Mills
I mean, it does a little bit, but maybe the hard part is we're spoiled, number one, because we came out of, I mean, I don't think it's arguable the greatest two or three years of real estate that the industry has ever seen, bar none, and did a quick shift to what could be perceived as one of the lowest points in real estate that we've ever had. But even if it's just the swing from where we were to where we are, I don't think we've ever experienced anything like that, especially not in that short amount of time, which is what's occurred. I think as an industry, we're all kind of, like, shook by that a little bit because we were all living the high life, and now we're trying to figure out how to make things work. So, speaking of that, you've experienced this, and again, our minds and our history is short, our memories are short, because 2008, and I want you to talk about this, was certainly very similar to what's happening now in that there was a massive shift in how the market, for different reasons. Right. The reasons were completely different, but the atmosphere was similar in that there was a lot of transactions occurring. The market was hot, people were buying homes left and right, and then something occurred, and then the market fell off, and we were in a period of time for several years, and it took a slow ramp up. I came in right at the end. I got started in the business in 2009, right at the end of 2009, going into 2010. So I didn't really get the full brunt of it. I kind of got the, we're at low rates now, and we can kind of start moving in that direction. But you started the company. Great timing, by the way, started the company in 2007, right before all that kind of fell apart. So talk a little bit about where you came from and where you started and then what that experience was like going through it and how it's kind of similar.

00:12:05 - Aaron VanTrojen
I got into the business as an originator in 2001, picked up the business very quick, became a high producing originator 2002, became a branch manager, then started running multiple branches for a small company, which grew to a big company and sold to an even bigger company. In 2006. And I realized very quickly that I wasn't wired to work for a big, bloated, bureaucratic mortgage company. And so I didn't make a change for that being one of the reasons. Two, for those that were in the business in 2007, 2008, there's a big consolidation amongst the mortgage industry. And one of the things they consolidate was compensation to the loan officers. And they did it on the spirit of compliance, which was a fabrication, because you didn't have to cut loan officers compensation by 50% just to hire a few lawyers. It didn't make mathematical sense. So my hand was forced. I didn't start Geneva in October of 2007 because I knew something everybody else didn't. It was just because I couldn't work for my competition. And I started this company for the sole reason, to accommodate myself as a high producing branch manager and originator. I knew things were already bad. I had no idea that they were going to get as bad as they did. It might have caused me some pause, because starting a mortgage bank during a time where the mortgage industry was taking out the entire financial global economy wasn't.

00:13:44 - Mike Mills
We were the bad guys, the big.

00:13:45 - Aaron VanTrojen
Bad, necessarily a smart thing to do. And we were well under capitalized. We were a very small company, but we did it. And I guess the lucky, maybe lucky. So they say success is a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work, and maybe this is a little bit of luck. But I was a very good, high producing originator. I did almost zero subprime, which was what initially got knocked out. I did a lot of alt a, but I didn't do it because I necessarily needed to. It was just much easier than doing a conventional loan or a government loan, and there was no cost difference. So when the market crashed, my originations didn't crash. A lot of people were down 80% in originations, and mine probably ticked down 10%. So I was still able to originate a high volume of loans as an individual, and I basically kept the company alive with my own production. And then over a short period of time, all we did, the model was the company was to make a little bit of money. We were going to pay the lion share to the originators, offer the service that they needed to be offered, so on and so forth. Some bells and whistles, and we were on our way, and we slowly grew organically. It probably took us till 2012 before we really got our footing. Harp, that was a big help.

00:15:17 - Mike Mills
Yes, helped out a lot of people. They had to. I mean, everybody benefited from that. So it was directed at one group, I mean, they were trying to get the industry back to where they weren't about to completely collapse.

00:15:32 - Aaron VanTrojen
Yeah. As people ran for the hills and everybody was scared about compliance and this, that. And the other thing is they just didn't do the due diligence. If they just read the compliance, if they just read the laws and the changes that were being made, they would realize that your life is not going to be, I mean, it's going to be affected, but you can just navigate through those things if you understand what it is that you have to navigate through. And I don't think people did that. I think they basically listened to all the noise and it created a bunch of fear. And I did it. I used to lobby on behalf of brokers at the time and go to DC every single year and meet with the lawmakers. And so I wanted to be educated and knowledgeable about the things that were affecting my livelihood, that were affecting my business, and then figure out how to structure my business, my goals, my business plan, based on the environment that I was operating in.

00:16:34 - Mike Mills
Yeah. Whenever you get into a situation where there's adversity that comes your way, when you have problems, there's a tendency to crawl into a hole, a lot of people, because there's a certain amount of fear that you get because, well, how am I going to change what I do? And I think as we head into 2024, after coming out of 2023 and the changes that have occurred in the industry, just as the market being down as a whole overall, whether it be lenders or realtors, whoever's out there trying to sell their services, we think that, okay, if we just keep doing what I was doing before, then it's going to be okay. And the reality is that you do have to change things and it does take work. You have to go. I mean, even what you were saying you were getting out there in front of, I know you're meeting in, you know, maybe that's a level, local realtor's not going to Washington to lobby on their behalf, but you're out in the community, you are doing activities that are driving, whether it be your Persona in the community or your person out there, that is pushing business in your direction sometimes just by the nature of you showing up. And a lot of times, I think as salespeople, again, whether it be realtors or lenders, we lose sight of the fact that the phone's just not going to ring on its own. You're going to have to go out there and change your habits, change your daily routines change all the things that you're going to do every day in order to even get close to the level of success you had before, because it's not going to be what it was before and your phone's just not going to ring on its own. So what did you do specifically as far as changing how you were reaching out to? Was it your database, was it realtors? And even from a realtor point of view, are you hitting your sphere? What was it that you had to switch up because things were falling apart? Because you didn't have a choice, you had people's jobs that were depending on it.

00:18:28 - Aaron VanTrojen
Surprisingly, I didn't have to do as much as you might have thought differently. And I think it's because largely how I built my business to begin with. One, before I even got into the mortgage industry, I was a customer working 80 hours a day or 80 hours a week. So I had the discipline, I had the work ethic. And I know that might sound extreme by some people, but for the goals that I wanted to accomplish, I needed to work 80 hours a day to beat the other people I was competing against. I needed to work 80 hours a day and I did it differently than most people in the industry. I know this might sound weird, but I never chased real estate agents. I focus on generating the client and not relying on others to bring me business. And I think that really helped because I built that foundation of my own borrowers and my own network, and I built a great database that I was constantly in contact with. And this started in 2001. I was big into my community, I was big into the corporate market, which is what I learned from a previous industry when the market did shift. Now, I did run a niche of investors because I wound up on an investor seminar all over the country where I was giving presentations to investors. So they got wiped out. Come 2007, 2008, investors wasn't a good target anymore, which is very similar to now.

00:19:55 - Mike Mills
It's not a great target right now either, right.

00:19:58 - Aaron VanTrojen
Who wants to invest when home prices are plummeting? At the same time, there was a niche of my investors that were still very well healed and they weren't getting hit and they were taking the opportunity to buy homes that were in a free fall. So I did contain some of that niche. But basically what I did is I literally kept doing what I'd done for the last six, seven years that I'd been in the business. I pivoted slightly from the focus of being investors. After 2008, I stopped doing the investor seminars. So that did affect some of my business. But the time that I was spending doing the seminars, I just stepped it up with the other things that I was doing prior to generate business. Slight pause. I'm going to close this door. I got back in my background.

00:20:47 - Mike Mills
No, you're good. Well, another thing that just in talking with you, and by the way, if I hadn't said this already, so I am now an employee of Mike Mills Mortgage and Finance. So I certainly have a bias in this situation. I recently changed from where I was before and with you guys now, and for many reasons, in speaking with you and learning about how you ran your business and how you run Geneva and why, some of the core principles that you guys have as a company, which is one of these right here, which we'll get to in a minute, which is our shirt, we're twinsies today. That was not planned. But you invest in people, and I think that that's an amazing quality of what the company does, not that everybody says gives it lip service. Hey, we invest in our salespeople, but there's a lot of actions that you guys show, and we'll get into some of that. But I want to talk a little bit about your own individual core routines, principles, fundamentals that you do, whether it be as a CEO of a company or as an originator. I don't think it's changed much as far as your day. Like when you get up, how you get started, what you do, your method of scheduling out your day and planning it, and still taking time for yourself and your family. So can you talk a little bit about kind of how you've structured your time? And I don't think it's changed much, and you can obviously refute that if it has. But I think for the most part, from when you were originator to what you're doing now, it's pretty similar. So can you talk a little bit about that?

00:22:22 - Aaron VanTrojen
Yeah. All honesty, I don't work 80 hours a week anymore. Some weeks, yes, but that's not my focus anymore. I don't have to. I've scaled this business and hired people to take some things off my plate to prevent me from doing that. I stopped originating in 2001, which I should have stopped much sooner, but I couldn't help myself, because for me, originating is easy. I know that might pain somebody to hear that, but it was very easy. It's very easy for me to originate. My wife, who runs operations, finally took encompass away from me and said, enough is enough. So I didn't have a choice in the matter anymore. But, yeah, I'm a very disciplined person. I have goals, and my goals are based in reality. And they're not wishes and hopes and dreams. They are things that I'm going to do right. And I will do everything I can to get to those goals, which I think has made me largely successful since I've been pursuing these goals, which the goalpost moves as you accomplish new goals. Of course, I probably still work in the 50 to 60 hours week. I'm up 04:00 a.m. Every single morning straight to the gym. One. I love fitness. I love the fitness industry. It's in my blood. It's where you start. Just like originations, it comes easy to me. It's not hard for me to go to the gym. If I don't, I start to spin out. And also, I think that for me, and it's a total personal opinion, is you can't have a magnificent business if some other element of your life is in disarray. Right. And I constantly tell kind of tongue in cheek the employees. I'm like, clean your bathroom, make your bed. And I'm not the first one that said that because I don't believe that you can live amongst disarray, chaos and have a successful business. That's two different people. You follow what I'm saying?

00:24:33 - Mike Mills
Absolutely.

00:24:35 - Aaron VanTrojen
So the best part of my day is working out. And I start answering the call probably at about the phone around 06:00 and I'm a very scheduled person. So throughout my day, I've got usually things every hour on the hour based on what I'm trying to accomplish. My goals of the day, being an owner of a company, sometimes you'reactive and things get thrown off schedule. You come off the rails a little bit, but you got to make sure that you're always getting back to what you're trying to accomplish. That's not unusual.

00:25:11 - Mike Mills
No, but it's very difficult for people to do sometimes. And being regimented seems like this massive task for people. But living off your calendar and setting your appointments for the day and blocking out time, I think there's a lot of talk about it, of course, but why do you think it's so difficult for people to actually do? Because the people that I've come across that have actually been able to enact that, I think the physical side of it is incredibly important because your body and your brain are so incredibly intertwined that if you don't get some of that stress and anxiety out through physical activity of any kind, you can go for a walk, you can go to the gym, whatever it is that you do, but just something to work up a little bit of a sweat and then that takes your brain into a whole new place for the day and gets you pushing in the right direction. And then if you don't let the day dictate to you what's going to happen, it will. Sometimes there's no such thing as the perfect day. There's always going to be issues. But you have to be okay with that and know that the next thing that's coming, you have control over. Why do you think that's such a challenge for people to do? Sometimes? Yeah.

00:26:19 - Aaron VanTrojen
I've been in the business 20 some years and I don't know if I've had a perfect day yet. In the mortgage industry, it's a little bit dysfunctional, but I would say that you can blame your parents in most cases. I think parents have a lot to do with it. In all honesty, my parents didn't teach me one thing about financial success. Zero. But my dad was a Seattle firefighter for 33 years and he got up very early and I wanted to be like him. I actually wanted to be a firefighter and a civil servant, help people as my career. So I get up with him and at the very early hours, at twelve years old, I got my first paper out. And so it was a morning paper out. So I get up at 04:00 a.m. So I've been getting up at 04:00 a.m. Since I was twelve. So it's not hard, it's not challenging. Right. I think some of these things were just instilled in me very early. And it wasn't until I got out of college where I actually learned, I was taught by somebody else that, hey, somebody actually told me, Aaron, you could be successful. And I'm like, no, I don't know what you're talking about. Other people are successful. I'm not successful. I'm not a doctor. I don't have a PhD. I'm not super smart. But he told me, you could be successful. All you got to do is believe that you can be successful and you will be successful. And there's a lot of truth to that. And so that was instilled into me right after I got out of college. And thankfully, that was instilled in me because it became who I am. Right. And I think the biggest difference between those that are successful and those that aren't some has to do with believability, right?

00:28:06 - Mike Mills
It's like self talk. Self talk. What do you tell yourself every day? Do you tell yourself you're useless, or do you tell yourself inside that you can do it? Right?

00:28:14 - Aaron VanTrojen
Yeah. And then there's the confidence, the parallels. I won't get into it because I could talk all day about it, but my daughter races cars, and she's like, well, how do I know I can win if I've never won, right? And it's just like, how do I know if I could become successful if I'm not successful? And so there is the belief this was all taught by Napoleon Hill and think and grow rich, which, again, I'm not the brilliant mind that made this stuff up, but it is absolutely true. And if you believe that you can be successful, and then obviously you got to get more granular and define what that means to you. Because what success means to you, Mike, might be completely different than what it means to, you know, some people. The success is the life work balance, and some is a yacht. And I'm not judging either way, but it's what creates that fire in you. And then you actually got to live that life that's going to get you to whatever you define as success and that know, again, to steal from Napoleon Hill. My burning you. If you have a burning desire to reach success, and it tends to be monetary, and if it's a high mark, you're going to sacrifice. And I think that's the next thing that people don't do. They're not willing to sacrifice. And that's okay. It really thins out my competition, because while I'll work a weekend, they'll sit home and watch football all day.

00:29:48 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:29:49 - Aaron VanTrojen
And I'm not judging those that sit home and watch football all day. But while you're doing nothing, I'm excelling.

00:29:57 - Mike Mills
That's the Kobe Bryant thing, the mamba mentality. Right, right. You put in the hours, and he's like, if I take 50 extra jump shots a day than you do, compound that over a year, and I'm going to be 50% better than what you are. That's just how it works, right?

00:30:14 - Aaron VanTrojen
Kobe, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Mills sisters. I mean, if you look at the greatest athletes of all time, yeah, some of them might have been physically gifted, but maybe they all. Yeah, they just outworked everybody and they sacrificed. And you got to come to a realization. As a person. Are you willing to sacrifice to get to your goals? It's a personal decision, and I sacrificed a lot to get to where I'm at today, and I still sacrifice. There's a lot of things I don't do. I see a lot of my employees and friends and family that are doing things that I'd much rather be doing than working. But I've chose to work. I've chose the stress, the anxiety, because it's getting to me to where I want to go.

00:31:10 - Mike Mills
Yeah, but you've also accepted the fact that you chose that and you're not miserable with it because that's the route you've chosen to go. And so it's easier to deal with that sometimes internally, because if you can say, okay, look, this is what I wanted, there are going to be days, and I'm sure you experience there are days you're like, man, this sucks. I really don't want to do this today, but just like, going to the gym, I'm sure there's probably some days, not many, but I'm sure there's probably some days you're like, I don't want to do this today, but this is who I am. This is what I do. This is the life that I chose. So I'm to do it because that's what you're supposed to do when you're that person, right?

00:31:43 - Aaron VanTrojen
Yeah, I try to quit like three times a week.

00:31:46 - Mike Mills
Yeah, exactly. Well, and I think that's the part that some people that are always struggling with this stuff don't understand. When they look at somebody that's had some success and has really triumphed in a lot of areas that they think, oh, well, they just wake up every day and they're ready to go and go get it, and it's like, no, they deal with the same things that you do. The difference is that they just can overcome them for whatever reason, whatever method you use to go about doing it. Some people meditate, some people exercise, some people, it's the positive mindset or whatever you want to call it, there's something that those people do to get over that hump, because every single human being that wakes up and is doing whatever it is that they're doing has a day where they're like, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to stop doing this. I want to do something else because it sounds like it would be better and easier. But the reality is that once they get into it and they think, okay, no, this is the life I've chosen. This is what I'm going to do. They're able to overcome that, but a lot of people aren't. And I think that's the ultimate separation is we all go through the same emotions. It's just whether or not you have the discipline to get through it or not.

00:32:50 - Aaron VanTrojen
Anybody watching or listening to this later is like, think of your mindset in 2000 and 22,021, when we saw our industry unprecedented situation, we were all geniuses.

00:33:04 - Mike Mills
Everybody was great at their job. We're the best at this job I've ever been.

00:33:07 - Aaron VanTrojen
Right. And so did your income triple because of the environments or did you work three times harder? And so for me, once we got through the initial shock of COVID and the Cares act and so on and so forth, and they righted that wrong. I saw it as a means to get me to my goal faster. And so I worked harder than I've ever worked before to maximize on the potential that we had in that very unique time in history. And I don't think most people did. I think they just were like, great. My paycheck tripled. I'm doing no extra work, and I'm going to ride this thing out. And then 2022 comes along and they go from hero to zero overnight. But that would not have happened if they didn't change their work ethic in 2000 and 22,021.

00:34:03 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:34:03 - Aaron VanTrojen
You follow what I'm saying? I mean, we have people within this company that have had the best years of their career last year, 2023. And it's not because they're in a special market or they have special rates or they have a special program or they're lucky. It's because they work and they've built a great foundation that's going to get them through the worst of markets.

00:34:31 - Mike Mills
Yeah. So one of the other core fundamentals of your company, and one of the reasons that it attracted to me was obviously because of the shirt I'm wearing here. But you are a big believer in investing in people. And like you said, success is measured differently for everybody. And creating whatever that version of success is for that person, for that human, is something that you guys pride yourselves on and you try to do through every step in every level of the company. So whether you're building a team around you or whether you're servicing your clients in a particular way, what is it about that core value that you all have established? Why was that and so important to you, and what has it done to help you kind of grow along the path?

00:35:20 - Aaron VanTrojen
I've been told this a thousand times that I'm unique as a CEO in the mortgage industry. I think it's a compliment. But I think that, again, it goes back to, I was raised by a civil servant. I wanted to be a civil servant. I wanted to help people. I wasn't motivated by money. I fell into this industry accidentally, like most people did, but my core values never left. So I've always wanted to help. My focus now is mostly to help my employees reach success and aspirations they may never dreamed of. And then hopefully, if we can help them do that, they can extend that to their customers and their referral partners. And I also got to make a statement. This is not a political statement. Everybody thinks that because I care about the planet or I love other people, that I'm a liberal, I'm also a capitalist. That doesn't make me a republican, right. It's not a political statement is that we believe that if you're human and you're a good person, those are the people that we want to be around. We don't want to be around. We don't want to work with people that are hateful, that are hateful individuals that are bigoted and sexist and racist and all those other negative things. Life's too short. It's way too short to be those things. So my whole goal, I didn't coin this. James of marketing did. But he asked me when we hired him, he's like, what's the most important thing to you? And I said, hiring good people. And most people in our industry would think production, production, production. And that's not what I'm saying. It's first and foremost, are you a good human? It's important that you're productive, that you don't lose money. That's important for the economic health of the company. But what makes far more importance to me is if they're a good person, are they of good character? Are they going to make my life better on a daily basis working with them? Are they just going to yell at everybody and think that's actually going to help?

00:37:50 - Mike Mills
Yeah. Well, and you all have had people that you've turned down before because you do a lot of recruiting, and it's one of the most active parts of what you do every day. But I know that you've come across large producers that I think a lot of companies would snatch up in a heartbeat. And it was maybe a little shocking to them that you said no, which in and of itself is kind of an appeal because it's like the whole, wait a minute, I'm the prettiest girl at the dance. What do you mean, no? Of course you're like, no, not in this case. I don't particularly want you. So how have you been able to balance that? Because that's a hard thing to do. It's difficult to say no to somebody when the money's there. That's a hard thing to do.

00:38:30 - Aaron VanTrojen
And trust me, don't think that I'm not strained because I'm a capitalist through and through. I like earning right. I enjoy it. Yes, but it's. At what price? Again, like I said, life's too short to deal with the pain and suffering of working for people that I don't believe are good humans. And again, the stress, not a political thing. I could care less what your politics are, but you're absolutely right. And they're not going to be good for my culture. They're not going to be good for the people that have made this company so good. If I bring in a high producing branch and they're throwing grenades over every wall, that's not going to be good for the company. Somebody else in the company is going to feel that because it's going to affect somebody else's day. I don't want that. And again, a fortunate knock on wood, I've surpassed every financial goal I ever dreamed of. And it's not because they were vast. It's again, I wanted to become a firefighter. So my bar was a lot lower than many of the people in this industry. So the motivation right now is not to be the biggest. I don't care anything about volume. I mean, I care about profitability. But a lot of the people that are actively growing this company, mostly branch managers that have aspirations to get bigger, and I've taught them how to do this, is they might say something that call me about a branch and, like, they're doing 5 million a month. I'm like, I don't care. Are they a good person and are they profitable? Check those two boxes. And we're probably a great fit, right?

00:40:22 - Mike Mills
Yeah. Because sometimes you do a lot of volume doesn't mean you're putting a lot.

00:40:26 - Aaron VanTrojen
Especially the last two years.

00:40:27 - Mike Mills
Yes. Volume doesn't necessarily translate into profitability sometimes. So building that team around you, putting people that you can really. I had a friend of mine that worked with for many years who I still have great respect for. He called it being in the foxhole. And when you're in the foxhole with those people and you can trust everybody around you and they're good people, then you're going to trend more towards success because everybody's pushing in the same direction. So whether you're building, if you're a realtor and you're building a team of referral partners, transaction coordinators, your inspectors, all the stuff that you do that group of people around you have to be people that you like and want to be around, because otherwise, if you're hating life every single time you got to deal with that person, then why are they in your sphere? Why are they with you?

00:41:19 - Aaron VanTrojen
The pain and suffering? Again, like I said, I've been very fortunate because I built a business where I didn't have to rely on other people for business. But when I hear the pain and suffering some of my originators go through because of the referral partners they have and the abuse they take from the referral partners, I'm like, dude, life is too short. You got to move on, because I promise you, in this industry, wherever you're getting referral business, there are people of good character that will generate you business. You don't have to rely on this idiot. Don't do it. Don't succumb to just making money because you'll be miserable.

00:42:05 - Mike Mills
Yeah, but you got to get out and go find them.

00:42:07 - Aaron VanTrojen
That's why they find them. It's not that hard.

00:42:11 - Mike Mills
No, people deal with. They deal with abuse or whatever you want to call it, just because it's easy, because they don't want to change their habits and behaviors because it's already there as opposed to trying to establish something new. But it's refreshing when you go establish something new and you break out of the fear of, this is just what I've always done. That's a hard thing, and it's very difficult for people to do, but once they do it, it's kind of like a cold plunge. Once you do it and you come out of that freezing water that you did not want to get into, and it's 30 degrees and miserable, but once you step out of it, the endorphins that kick in and the feeling that you have is unlike anything else, and that's where it's the same thing. Getting out of your comfort zone is how you grow. That's how you grow. You have to do something that you don't like to do that's uncomfortable in order for you to have growth. One of the things that you guys are great with that I really gravitated to is the database. This applies for realtors, this applies for lenders, this applies for. And you built your business on this. So can you talk a little bit about the importance of the database again, it seems like because I talk to agents all the time, and they really like, oh, yeah, I got to have a database, and my company provides the CRM and I kind of use it. I don't understand. I'm like, you are leaving so much money on the table because you have a tool that's available to you that you don't utilize properly. So why has that been such a big success for you guys and putting the focus on it?

00:43:38 - Aaron VanTrojen
Well, what's critical, too, first and foremost, is I think that the industry leans heavily on technology, and I think it's out of sheer laziness. This little widget I have here, and this mobile app here all of a sudden is going to generate me a bunch of business. It doesn't. It won't. We have all of the most amazing technology the industry has to offer, but we use it to make you more efficient. We don't make it to replace you.

00:44:06 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:44:06 - Aaron VanTrojen
So we're really big on human first technology in the background to make you more efficient as a human. Right, right. And I caution everybody in this industry, especially in the age of AI, which is going to be very transformative, way more than most people anticipate. Again, read about it. Don't just listen to the news, talk about it. Read about AI. They've been writing books about it for over 20 years. Don't automate yourself out of a job. Database is hugely important. Again, I learned this from a previous industry. So every single person that I'd ever talked to, it went to my database. And people think this is funny, but it's true, is I'm literally on the second set of business cards that I've had since we've owned this company. And the only reason I'm on the second set is because we changed the logo and the address. So I'm not even through the first set, and that's 16 years later. I don't use business cards. I don't believe in business cards. Again, personal opinion. I'm not throwing stones at anybody or judging, but if you give somebody your business cards, you're waiting for them to do something with it, which is likely put it in the washing machine. Okay? So anytime I'm engaged with anybody, I get their contact information. I get their contact information, I dump them in the CRM, and depending on what the topic is, I might have personal messages, phone calls, texts, so on and so forth, and I might bring these people into my social network as well. Again, every situation is different, but I'm getting their contact because once I have their contact, they're stuck with me until they tell me to go away. And most people are too nice to tell me to go away, so they're stuck with me. Right?

00:45:52 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:45:53 - Aaron VanTrojen
I've built this huge database, and this is prospective borrowers, it's been real estate agents, it's been companies that have been engaged with or talked to. Now it's potential branch managers and recruits, and they all go into these different databases based on what it is that I'm trying to do with that individual. And then we put them in. So we're always touching them. And I think what makes Geneva so remarkably different than the industry is, and it's mostly noticeable in the last two years, is most of the industry keeps advertising. Two, one, buy downs and rates are going up and rates are going down, and now's the best time to buy a house. Nobody cares. Okay? And if you're advertising or marketing on social media, which you should be, because I believe statistically the largest segment of homebuyers right now are in that age category, they spend a vast majority of their time on social media. And not just Facebook or old people like me go, but you got to be on Instagram, TikTok and God only knows how many others, YouTube, you got to be on all of. And what Geneva does is we put out content that might sound counterintuitive, but we rarely talk about mortgages. What we do is we try to get people engaged with us. We try to get the people. I'm trying to get the sun out of my eyes. We try to get people engaged with us to like to comment, and then if they like and they heart and they comment and do these different things on your social media, respond. And the response is, hey, Mrs. Jones, I saw you hard in my thing. Thank you. Do you need to refinance? No, that's not the tactic. Right. The tactic is, how can I help you? Do I need to do anything for you? And again, the industry, from an originator standpoint, again, they're like, well, nobody's going to refinance because they're at 3% interest rate. Wrong. Absolutely wrong. Rate is irrelevant. What's their financial situation? And right now with credit card debt, I think at about the trillion dollar level, which is the highest it's ever been in us history.

00:48:04 - Mike Mills
By significant margin. Right?

00:48:06 - Aaron VanTrojen
By a significant margin. These people at 3% interest rates are.

00:48:10 - Mike Mills
At 25% credit card debt, they're getting crushed. Yeah.

00:48:15 - Aaron VanTrojen
And so you can take them from a 3% to a 7%, drop their monthly payments by 2000, $3,000, and save their life, save their financial life. And again, it's about educating, educating, educating, educating. The industry, including real estate agents, have been so focused on rate rates, which I'm telling you right, now, as a loan officer to another loan officer, if rate is the issue, you're in the wrong business. Yeah, it's not about rates. It's never about rate. It's about changing their financial situation for the good, the bad. I mean, it's all about trying to help them move forward in life in a better financial way, whether buying a house or selling a house or consolidating debt or remodeling. And that rate is irrelevant.

00:49:11 - Mike Mills
Well, that goes back to what you were saying about the human facing side being the first part and the technology being a piece that just accentuates that. When you have things that kick out on social media or you have some type of automated system that reaches out to your database, when people actually do reach out and touch you, now, that's where you engage, that's where you come in and say, okay, how can I help you? What can I do? How can I educate you in this particular process? Or sometimes just how you been? How's life treating you? How are you feeling? How's your family? I mean, there's so many ways to engage with people, but I think so much right now, and I see this on social media because I'm on there of call me now to buy and sell, or call me now to get your loan, or whatever. It's all about me.

00:49:55 - Aaron VanTrojen
Choose me.

00:49:56 - Mike Mills
Pick me. I'm the one for you. And instead of saying, how can I help you? Here's what I know. Here's the information that I have as a professional in real estate that you may not have, and I'd like to share it with you right now so then you can make an adult decision. And there's not a lot of time spent doing that. And it's more about, hey, call me today to buy or sell your home, or call me today to do your loan. And like you said, people don't care. They flip right past that. The only people that you're advertising to are loan officers and other real estate agents. And that's generally what you see.

00:50:27 - Aaron VanTrojen
Yeah. And not to say that you shouldn't send out email blastes and this, that and the other thing, but how many people in our industry on the real estate side or the loan side squandered the opportunity of the holidays to pick up the.

00:50:39 - Mike Mills
Yeah, yeah, pick up the phone.

00:50:42 - Aaron VanTrojen
Mrs. Jones, how are you? Happy holidays. Happy new year. Let me know if you need anything. How are the kids? And you would be amazed at how many people will say, hey, by the way, and they'll ask you something relevant to your industry. Where you might have the opportunity to help them. If not, you just made somebody feel good. You're on their radar. So whenever they need to help, need your help, they're likely going to call you because you were nice enough to pick up the phone and call them versus just barrage them with text messages.

00:51:15 - Mike Mills
Yes, because you're a nice human being. You're being a good human being and checking on them and seeing how they are. But again, we all get wrapped up in our own little worlds. I tell my kids all the time, everybody lives right here. You all live right here. We don't see what's happening around us because we're all focused on ourselves and it's not a good or a bad thing, it's just what it is. And so you have to be aware of that and be able to adjust and try to get out of this always here and thinking about other people. We don't want to say, oh, I'm very altruistic and I care about other. Okay, you're still here. Okay. But you have to be conscious of that and then figure out how to step outside your comfort zone and actually try to make steps to help people and engage with people that otherwise you wouldn't because you're so focused on you. Yeah, it's a hard thing to do. It is. So let's say that everything crashed on you. Tomorrow the whole company collapses, it falls apart, and you have to start all over again in real estate in general. Okay, whether realtor, lender, whatever. What are you going to do? What's the first thing that you're going to wake up and go, okay, because you're not quitting.

00:52:25 - Aaron VanTrojen
Right.

00:52:26 - Mike Mills
You're not going to give up? Maybe at this point, I don't know. But you haven't quit in the past. All right, I'm starting from scratch. What are your habits? What are you doing to make sure that you're going to be able to feed your family tomorrow?

00:52:42 - Aaron VanTrojen
Yeah, I'd like to rephrase it because I never want to think about even the possibility of all come crashing down because I don't think it would do it again. I'd probably be selling tacos on the beach in Mexico. But it's asked of me all the time. Aaron, if you're brand new to the industry today, okay, what would you do?

00:53:04 - Mike Mills
There you go.

00:53:05 - Aaron VanTrojen
And for 23 years, I've given the exact same response.

00:53:11 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:53:12 - Aaron VanTrojen
And I'll do what I did when I got into this business so quick, and I won't make this too long of a story. When I got in the business, I had no idea what I was doing. I had no mentor. The only guy that owned the company, the only Arizona employee was me. I had a desk, a phone, and not even a computer. This is a true story. And so I had no idea what to did. I was a very good salesperson because of my previous experience with a different industry, but I had no idea how to do a mortgage or put one together. I just knew how to generate business. And I called my friend up in Seattle that was in the mortgage industry. I'm like, dude, what do I do? He says, pick up the phone book. We actually had them then and start calling real estate agents. So I did that for about ten minutes and I'm like, that's miserable. Never going to do that again. And I went back to doing the things that I did when I was in the fitness industry and I got into companies. I started calling companies again, companies and cities and organizations, and started going in and doing presentations to their employees. And no, I didn't do presentations. Know the difference between FHA and conventional loans? Because nobody cares. Okay? Nobody.

00:54:25 - Mike Mills
Until you're buying a house, you don't care. Yeah.

00:54:28 - Aaron VanTrojen
Tip to your loan officers if you're trying to teach that stuff to the real estate agents. That's why they're all asleep. Nobody cares. What they want to hear is something they don't know. They want to know something about what's going to happen or what you think is going to be able to happen. If you're smart enough and you do enough due diligence, you can come up with intelligent, rational concepts and ideas of what might happen or what is happening or what is likely to happen. And people will pay attention to you because they can't get that information on CNN or Fox, it's dated. It's mostly wrong. And if you're hearing it from industry professionals that are selling it to you, that's not going to be accurate information. And so I go in there and teach people on the responsibility of homeownership. And I took a different stance. This is very early in my career that maybe it's so great to walk into a room full of potential homebuyers and tell them, today might not be the best time for you to buy a house. And they're all like, what? The funny thing about it is, in any given market, that might be the truth. It's all an individual decision. It's motivated, based on somebody's personal situation at the time. But once they realize that you don't care about selling them something. And you do care about helping them and potentially telling them, no, you've got them.

00:56:00 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:56:01 - Aaron VanTrojen
Because everybody else that they work with, their friend that's a loan officer, their sister that's a real estate agent, are always telling them, now is the best time to buy. Now is the best time to buy because they're looking for that sell. But I'm playing the long game. Right? Everything I've done in this business, I know that the work that I'm doing today is going to generate me the returns tomorrow. When I got into this business in 2001, I wasn't trying to make as much money as I could. In 2001, I was starting a new career that I intended to retire in. So that could be 50 years. Right. So I got to plan out my business and do things today that's going to help me be successful over the course of that time, not just today. So that's what I would do. I would be outside of my office. I wouldn't be sitting in my office, and I'd be out in the community. I'd be talking to people. It's a numbers game. So you want to talk to as many possible people that you can that have the potential of buying a house in the shortest period of time with the least amount of economic expense, which is what I did then. And it's exactly what I would do today. I wouldn't do it any different. I don't know if I would pursue real estate agents. I don't like being reliant, not because I have any problem with real estate agents. I just don't like being reliant on other people for my business. Some of my most successful loan officers and my most successful branches rely on real estate agents. Great, that works for you. Keep doing that. But it wasn't the way I went, and it's no right or wrong. It's just what I chose to do. So if you're brand new to the business and wanted to chase real estate agents, then chase them. But don't walk into a real estate office and say, give me all the deals nobody else wants to do. That's absurd. Walk into the office and say, I'm the best loan officer that's ever graced this planet, and I want your very best clients because they're either going to throw you out because you're nuts, or they're like, maybe he is the best loan officer that's ever graced this planet.

00:58:11 - Mike Mills
You better show him why. Right?

00:58:13 - Aaron VanTrojen
And that's still dumbfound. It's dumbfounded to me. That so many people are in industry told people walk into the real estate office and take all their turndowns. That's absurd. Why would I want to fish in that pond?

00:58:28 - Mike Mills
Yeah, that sounds like a lot of headache and heartache for you, especially because you're more likely to lose. Because if someone else turned down, then you may have to turn them down, too. And then you weren't the hero, that's for sure.

00:58:37 - Aaron VanTrojen
Give me all your single wives and your dpas. No, thanks. Your credit repair. I mean, kudos to those people that are trying to provide home ownership for people that are in a worse financial situation. I'm all for it, but if that's your niche and that's your book of business, but if you're starting now, I figured out very early in my career that people that 20% down with an 800 credit score were easy to finance and they hung out with people that had similar credit scores and money.

00:59:13 - Mike Mills
Yeah, you grow within a network and surround yourself with a certain group of people, and you will find the business comes the way you want it.

00:59:23 - Aaron VanTrojen
It wasn't luck. It was a strategic move that I made just because I figured it out really quick. I had 500 credit scores and 800 credit scores, and it was very apparent very quickly which one was better to work with.

00:59:39 - Mike Mills
Yeah, but you have to be intentional about it, and you have to make sure that that's what you want, because otherwise, you just get what you get if you're not doing the efforts and the tasks to get you the type of business that you want to have. But you have to know what that is. Think. I think if you ask a lot of loan officers and even realtors, too, and you say, hey, what's your book of business? What do you do? Their answer is, I help everybody. And it's like, okay, so you sell in Dallas and you sell in Fort Worth and you sell in Arlington, or you do Va loans, you do fha loans. You do. Aren't you. Aren't you kind know? What is it? The jack of all trades is a master of know kind of situation. So, I mean, get a little more focused on what you're doing and find a niche and be the best at that niche, and you can always expand from there. But if you're just kind of servicing everybody, then are you servicing no one?

01:00:34 - Aaron VanTrojen
Right. And sometimes that's okay. You'll cast a huge net. If your business model works and you cast a huge net and you just get everything. Right? A mix of everything. As long as the numbers are there, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Plus, you could also be a little bit sheltered from changes in the market. Yes. Like in 2008, I wasn't as sheltered because I was heavy investor, but I pivoted quick, and I saw it coming long before most people did. I knew it was coming in December of 2006 because already 500 subprime companies gone bust. Right. In 2006. So, I mean, it was clear as day that we have a problem. And so I started to change my business model. But the other thing that was really fortunate through this journey, right, because I knew what I do, and I was pretty much self taught, is working with the investors. I didn't work with the people that were trying to buy houses with no money, that read some books about get rich quick. I dealt with very sophisticated, high net worth individuals. And what I learned is the more sophisticated, the more they were worth, the more they would be willing to pay. And that it's been completely lost in this industry. I hear it from my own company as well. As well, I deal with sophisticated borrowers. And so they're really price sensitive. Wrong. They're price sensitive because you've not delivered the value that makes them willing to pay more for the service and the value that you're going to provide. Yeah, well, the wealth they are, the more they're willing to pay.

01:02:14 - Mike Mills
Yes. Well, I use the plumber analogy. When you have a plumber come to your house and you're paying him $400 an hour, you're not paying him for the hour that he's there. You're paying him for the 20 years of experience that he has to not make sure that he messes up your toilet or your sink, but you can still pay someone else $400 an hour, and they don't have near the experience and near the know how, and they can mess things up. And you paid the exact same amount of money, but you found more value. So when that guy comes back to you and says, hey, I was $400 an hour, but now I'm $500 an hour because the demand of my time, that's worth it. I'll pay that because I'm not going to deal with the one that drugged me through the mud on the other side. And I paid the same amount of money and got not even close to what I needed. So it's all about the value that you provide and how you position yourself to your clients to make sure that you're the go to person whenever they make any decisions regarding real estate, because that's who you are and that comes to how you manage your database that comes to how you propagate yourself on social media. If you're giving information and not just asking for business all the time, and it comes to how you relate to people and what you go out and do, and all of that builds up who you are and your reputation in the industry. And if you're just sitting in your office, like you said, waiting for your phone to ring, then you are going to be selling the lowest cost and that's going to be an uphill climb for you. Well, Aaron, I know we are out of time and I really appreciate you hopping on with me for an hour today. You're a busy guy and I am thrilled to have you here. I'm thrilled to be with the company. I think this is going to be a great year. It's all what we put into it. And I thank you for you sharing a little bit of your history with us and kind of dumping your brain on us for a little bit. Before we go, is there anything you want to kind of leave everybody with and any parting words for the year coming our way?

01:04:07 - Aaron VanTrojen
Like I said, I do think this will be a better year than the last two, but I'm not overly optimistic about that at the end of the day, and this is the most important thing, is that 2024 can be the best year of your career. If you want it to be, regardless of rates, if you want it to be and are willing to work for it, this can be the best year of your career. Your choice. Your choice.

01:04:35 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

01:04:36 - Aaron VanTrojen
So hopefully you decide and you make it the best year of your career.

01:04:40 - Mike Mills
There you go. All right. Well, I appreciate it. Aaron, thank you very much for the time today. Thanks for everybody that stuck around. I'll be back with another market update on Tuesday and I hope everybody has a great week and make the year what you can make of it because it's up to you. Right.

01:04:54 - Aaron VanTrojen
Thanks, Mike.

01:04:55 - Mike Mills
All right. See you guys.