YouSaid · the spoken record

Mat Ishbia

lines on the record: 44
first: 2021-07-16
most recent: 2021-07-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The big focus is one technology, continuing to invest in technology. We have done that, and we're continuing to innovate with that. Second thing is we're investing in servicing. We create this servicing asset that's very profitable and successful. I used to have to sell it to bring in cash. Now I don't have to sell it. I still can sell it if the right opportunities are, but I don't need to sell. Now I can want to sell. It's a big difference.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, you know, I haven't focused my time on what I say, and there's a saying in business, like what got you here won't get you there. And my perspective is what got me here will get me there. I'm going to stay in the weeds of my business. I'm not going to change what I do. I'm going to continue to take care of running our company for our team members, our clients, shareholders, which I always ran it for shareholders. The difference is shareholders were only me back then. But now I got everybody in my company's a shareholder along with a lot of people in the public, which were excited about as well. But take care of your team members. Take care of your clients. Take care of the end consumer. And at the same time, take care of your shareholders. And so nothing has really changed in my business running daily. We obviously have more people on investor relations, and we got people on financial side that are doing things, but running the business day to day, I'm not changed what I'm doing. And a lot of investors back when we were doing this back and people were in our roadshow were investing us.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As I look at it, what's the best way to do this? And I looked at both options, although everyone in the world tells you that IPO seems like a better option because that's what everyone's always done. But I don't live that way. I don't live on what everyone's always done it. What's the best way? And we found that this was the best way, and I think I chose correctly.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we obviously are large enough and successful enough. A lot of people think SPAC. Oh, SPAC must be a questionable company. That's not anything. I mean, we made $3.3 billion in profit last year. So we went public through a SPAC because we chose that instead of an IPO. We chose that because we felt that was a better process for us for numerous reasons. We also got partnered with Alec Gores and the Gores group. Alec did a great job and his team about it is this. I'm going public. I'm not going public again. So how do you go public in the most efficient way possible while having someone ride shotgun and kind of advise you? And that's what Alec Gores and his team did. And so we felt that going public through a SPAC was a better option for us than an IPO. And I would do it again the same way. Now, every company's kind of different. Obviously, we're the largest SPAC of all time. But I don't look at it based on valuation.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, it's interesting. I like that people are trying to innovate in the residential mortgage space and residential housing space. The reality is this you've got to always follow the money, right? Why is someone doing that? They're buying your house today because they're probably buying it below what it actually should be selling for, right? And is that best for you? Is it that hard to sell a house these days? So I guess my perspective is I'm not going to call them gimmicks because I'm sure there's obviously some substantiated strong businesses. But the reality is those things aren't going to become the masks. There's different reasons they're doing it. Everyone's trying to make money in there. And if there's a gap, there's an arbitrage there that, hey, you want to sell your house for $300, I'll buy it for $290 today so you don't have to worry about it and go buy another house and I'll try to sell it for $305. They're trying to make an arbitrage right there anyways. And so do I think they're longstanding maybe? Do I think they're gimmicks? Yes. Do I think that they're going to be mass scale? No.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it's definitely a space we do a lot of business, and we do billions of dollars a month of it. So we're doing a lot of business in June. Those loans are put 20% down $740 FICO, good credit score. Once again, the principles that we talked about where they had to have a job to show their income. They had to prove it. And a lot of these people are self-employed, and they actually have to show it on their tax returns in order to qualify for one of these loans. And so those are good, solid loans, and those are good, solid borrowers, and those are people you want to be able to serve so that they can buy a house.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so great question. And yes, they will start to get, I don't know if the word is stupid or riskier or a little bit more. But because of what the CFB did and a guy named Richard Cordray and somebody, they put in some rules that basically restrict your ability to ever doing it to the extremes. I'm not saying people can't get in some of the gray areas, but on a mass scale, the extremes such as back to our earlier joke or comment about no income, no job, here's a loan, like that can't be done anymore. That can't be done anymore. And so therefore there are some rules in place that is just really not going to be on a mass scale that you can get those things done. And so I'm not concerned. Do lenders lower their standards? Absolutely. I'm sure they do when rates go up. But at the same time, it's not going to be able to be lowered to put the American economy at risk like it did last time.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, greed got in the way. People started one upping each other, trying to think, and they didn't understand the consequences. The whole American world, really the whole world learned. And so now everyone understands it and respects that housing drives the economy in such a way that people don't, and to mess up or break housing is not a way that's going to win long term. And that's what happened. People got greedy. People got, were trying to make money. Things weren't working well. They were kind of one-uping each other on products and nuances, and the whole thing kind of fell apart. And I don't think that, I don't think I'll see that happen again in my lifetime. Does it mean that there won't be some gray areas stuff going on? I'm sure there will be, but it's not going to be at that extreme.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think a decade or two ago, it wasn't responsible lending. There's some things that happened back then that were not the right way. I think there's a lot of rules in place now. It's a very strong foundation of the mortgage industry right now. There are not these shakier loans being given. The way I is you want to help everyone get a house if they want a house, but you got to make sure that they meet all the criteria they have, the income, they have a job, the house is worth what they say it's worth. There's a lot of things you have to do. And back then, there's a lot, I don't know the right word is flimsier rules, crazier rules, rules that were not responsible lending. Right now responsible lending, it's not hard to get a mortgage right now if you qualify. If you pay your bills on time and you have a job and you make income, mortgages are easy to get. He's got to find the right person to help you get it, but it's not if you're self-employed and you don't show any income.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A quarter. Oh, I want two and a quarter. Well, you call them, you find out it's an arm, you find out it's a three year arm or a five-year arm. Not really what you want, and then you end up staying with them and getting a 30-year fix at a three and three eighths, and you don't even know the difference that you should have got 2.75. And that's part of the issue with going to a mortgage broker rather than going to these big lenders.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so adjustable rate mortgages these days are much different than back then. Now, we don't do very many at all. Actually, I could almost say we do zero because it's not even a 0.1 of a percent of what we do. But we'll call it, we don't really do them. We have it on the rate sheet and it's available. But here's what I think about arms. Arms are different today than back then. Back then it was two-year arms, 228. With prepayment penalties, and the rates went up like a half percent, I mean, excuse me, multiple percent per year or per adjustment period. These arms today are done through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. It's with the CFP what they've done. They are much safer arms. However, 30-year fix in the twos, unless you're selling in the next two or three years, how are you not taking a 30-year fix at 2.875? And so people, you know, most people are doing fixed rates. I think sometimes people are market arms, and that's part of the problem with buy people don't go, they go to these big commercials. You see someone talking about arms or adjustment rate more, you see a teaser rate of $2.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Their rate went up. You had to sell, and the whole thing collapsed. That's not happening right now. I'm sure of that. What is happening is that the $330,000 house today that maybe should only be worth $320 because it kind of went up faster than you expected, should you still buy it at $330? You probably should because unless you're only there for less than a year or two, because housing values is not going to go from 330 down to 290. Maybe it's 330 and it's 332 next year and 334 the following year doesn't go up fast, but you're still getting in at a 2.875 interest rate. So people thinking that this whole thing's going to collapse, they just don't know what they're talking about. They're just not right.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it's limited inventory, but partially because, remember, we're still finishing up this pandemic or getting through a pandemic where there's over a million consumers right now that aren't making payments on their mortgage. So they're in forbearance. Well, what does that mean? Well, if I'm not making a payment on my mortgage, I'm not selling my house. It's a pretty good deal. I got going right now, right? And so people aren't selling at the pace that they should be. When that changes, I think there will be a lot more inventory hitting the market. Now, is it a bubble? No, it's not a bubble. Depending on how you define a bubble, do I think housing value should be going up 10% a year? Absolutely not. I think they go up 1% to 3% a year, and that will be more normalized. It's not like 2008. Someone said to me, it's just like 2008. It's not like 2008. You don't know what you're talking about. It's nothing like 2008. 2008 was a bubble bigger than this one, but it was built on a horrible cracked foundation in the mortgage industry. The mortgage industry is not like that. People were getting loans when they didn't even qualify for it back then. And they were also doing adjustable rates.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So many people have a 30 year fix in the twos right now that they're not going to be refinancing into a three and a half. So therefore, the only time you really need to refinance is a divorce or a cash out. And people aren't going to cash out and pay a higher interest rate unless they really need the cash out of their house.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is. You got it. You're exactly right. There is some that's cash out and people tapping to equity their house is probably a little less rate sensitive, but it's still rate sensitive. And obviously housing values have gone up. So there is a little equity in people's houses. But the reality is this. If your business is 90 plus percent, anything, you're probably going to be in a tougher position, especially if it's something you don't control, which is the rates. Nobody controls the rates. I can't keep rates low, neither can the other lenders. You got to live with whatever rates are and you got to make the best out of it. So if your business is too one focused on, we really win when low rates happen. What happens when high rates happen? And that's going to happen, right? Even to the point that you made earlier, even if rates don't go high from what you and I would think of as high, which is 5, 6, 7 percent relatively, they just go to three and a half. It will stop the revenues because that means almost everyone, there's no reason to rebinance if you have a three and a quarter for.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When rates do go up, We'll win in a low rate environment. When rates go up, that's actually when the power of our business really shines.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it's going to slow it down substantially. And that's actually going to be the part that helps UWM, my company, become the number one overall lender because we are not dependent. The number one lender right now does about ninety three percent of their business is refinance. So yeah, it's great when rates are two eight seven. What happens when they're 3.875? Well, there's going to be a lot less refinance. It already slowed a lot of people down. If you follow our earnings call and the number one lender rocket, they guided to do 15 to 20 percent less business than the second quarter than they did the first quarter because rates went up just from two and a half to 2.875. I guided the reverse. I said, we're going to do more business in the second quarter than the first quarter. And so the point is when you're doing purchases and you're like our business is not a cyclical. And so rates, a lot of mortgage companies are strictly refinanced shops. Well, that's great in a 2020 boom year. But what about a 2022 rising rate year? How are you going to live? How are you going to survive? How are you going to succeed? And that's why we're excited about the opportunity.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it doesn't really impact it much. So we're not portfolio in these loans. These loans are being securitized with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Jinny Mae. And so whether the rate's 2875 or 3875, the difference in what we make is negligible. It's the same thing. And so I'd actually make an argument, the reverse, that as rates go up, you make less because there's less loans out there. So people are competitively pricing their loans or trying to squeeze their margins to get more business rather than make more money. And so when rates are low, especially when people make good amount of money on the loans, because there's so many loans out there, people don't have to be as price well. And that's why it's so important to go to a broker, because if you go to some lender, you don't know. You're not in the business, Barry. You don't know if three and eighth is the right rate or 2.75, you don't know. But the mortgage broker will know, and he'll say, no, you're actually 2.75, and here's the lender that we can sell it to and work with on it. And so I think that's an important thing is that as rates go up, it does not mean you make more money. It's actually, I could make an argument that this.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Percentage of our business, they're actually taking advantage of that $350,000 house, I can actually buy with $2.875 for interest rate rather than three and a half or four percent, which is actually giving them a great opportunity to buy a house that maybe they couldn't buy because rates are so low. So rates are extremely low right now. I believe they're going to stay low through the rest of this year. But they are going to tick up and they have ticked up a little bit so far.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, obviously after the pandemic or when the pandemic first started back in March of last year, a lot of crazy things are happening. Rates dropped because the Fed was buying a lot of mortgage backed securities. A lot of things happened that people were not expecting. It all kind of settled down. It's still buying a lot of mortgage and rates were extremely low for the second half of last year. 30-year fix in the twos, which is never seen before, right? And so 30-year fixed rates in the twos was what was common. And the crazy thing is it's still common today. It's still happening. And so rates dropped. And I think they got as low as two and a half, 30-year fix, two and three eighths, 30-year fix. So if you're getting a conventional loan, you should be getting two and a half, two and three eighths. But then rates went up a little bit this year. And everyone says, oh, rates have went up. Everyone's going to slow down. Well, rates are still 2.875. They're still all-time lows. And so anyone that didn't take advantage of it still can take advantage of it today. People that are buying homes, which is a big deal right now because that's a big deal.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm the biggest shareholder. I promise you, I'm doing everything best for the shareholders all the time because I'm the biggest one. We're all on the same team. But that does not mean what's best for shareholders or best for anyone is to do something crazy in third quarter 2021 that will pay for in 2024. And I think that's what happened in the past in the mortgage industry is people got a little bit focused on maybe a little greedy, maybe got a little over their skis on certain things. That's not going to happen at UWM.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We learned that quality always wins, and so I want to be the biggest, but I'm not going to ever sacrifice being the best. We are the best mortgage company in America, and we're proud of that. Our technology, our service, our pricing, everything's the best. But we are not the biggest. We are number two right now. But I will never, I'd rather be number 38 as competitive as I am than sacrifice the quality of what we do. So what happened in the past, and I don't know Angelo, Mozilla, and Countrywide that well, all I know is I study things and see what people have done. I know that the type of loans we do is the key and people focus on, oh, well, I could do more loans right now. Right now, maybe I could be number one if I open my credit box to do loans for people that maybe are a little bit more on the gray area. We at our company believe in long-term success, not short-term. And we're playing the long game. And so we're going to focus on doing the right things because I'm going to be here running it. I still own 94%. Someone said, oh, your shareholders, I go, my shareholders. I have one and a half billion shares.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can say, okay, Barry, what are you looking for? I'm closing 30 days at a great rate. Okay, well, here's the lender I'm going to go with then. Rather than, well, here's what we offer. It's going to take 60 days and we're going to pay certain lenders are a pay on certain things. Certain lenders are fast with certain things. Certain lenders cost more. They know these things. You have to go to the expert. You've got to go. It's like going to your general doctor and saying, who's the best heart surgeon? He'll refer you to the right place rather than just look it up online and say, oh, this guy says he does a good job with hearts. I'm not going to that guy.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the time. People have their mortgage stories, and especially when you're talking about 2014-15. But the reality is this, people don't know how to get a mortgage. They don't know where to go. They think that you see a commercial and you go there, you call your bank, you go there. That's the biggest problem. So consumer education is a big focus of mine. One of the reasons we went public was to help educate consumers and get myself out on a platform. Because if you go to find a mortgagebroker.com or you call 1-800 brokers, you do one of those things, you will find a broker in your community. They will shop on your behalf. It will be a fast, efficient, cheap process. Period. I have the utmost confidence in that because I see it every single day. But most consumers, they get lured into some TV ad or they hear something. They don't really know how to do it. And so that's part of my mission right now is how do we get more people to understand how to get a broker, even if it doesn't come to UWM, go to find a mortgagebroker.com. Doesn't mean it's going to come to UWM. It goes to one of the other. But if you go there, then that...”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well, once again, mortgages nobody wants. So you got to make it faster, easier, and cheaper. And so cheaper, we already are that. That's data, and you can prove that. Faster, same thing. A couple of our competitors, obviously one of them that you talked about earlier, rocket, they went public and they touted a lot of their technology and they've done a very nice job, Dan Gilbert's done a good job at their business and built something very successful. But, you know, they talk about technology. Well, how do you know you have the best technology? What's the measurement? It's either your cost to originate, your expenses that you can make things more efficient, or you close loans fast. Well, the industry closed loans about 47 days. Rocket did a great job. They're closing loans in 29 days. They're better than most. We closed loans in 16, 17 days here. Our technology has differentiated because we've built our technology from scratch. I got about 13, 1400, actually 1250, 1250 to 1300 technology people here at our company every single day grinding.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And at the same time, I think it's much more longstanding, and you'll see that as we take over the number one spot in the coming years”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll work them. It's very simple. So I outwork them and I invest in technology. And so I love that. I love that they have a similar setup as us because we can compete head to head and we find out who's better. And we believe in our motto. We believe in doing right by brokers and consumers. And we have a different model mentality than some of those other companies. Other companies are focused on profit, profit, profit. We're focused on winning, winning, winning, and profit follows. And that's worked year over year as we've continued to grow. When I took over in 2013, I think we did it or 2014 when I took over 10 billion. We did $180 billion of mortgages this past year. And we're going to do more in 2021. And everyone else is not going to. Everyone can do well when rates are really low. Some of those competitors you talked about, they are extremely focused on refinance. Once again, that's great when rates are 2%, 2.5%. It's not going to be as great when rates are 4.5%. So our business model is much more balanced, much more focused on consumers and brokers.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Singular focus is a huge advantage. And if I was a bank, that's one thing that I probably wouldn't be able to do because they want you to diversify in different respects. But the thing is a mortgage. It's not like this little thing you're doing. This is a huge part of someone's life and dominating on that. It's like the way I would explain it is the Welsh Fargoes and Chases in these big companies. They have to be a general doctor. You're a general practitioner, right? But I'm the heart surgeon. When you get a heart surgeon, you don't go to your main doctor. You actually want to go to the best heart person in the country. And that's what a mortgage is. You only do it once every three or four years. You want to get the best in the country. And that's what mortgage brokers are. And that's what UWM does.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, being a non bank lender, a lot of people think, oh, that means you have less compliance, less regulatory. I argue the reverse. I have more compliance, more regulatory. I got to deal with 50 individual states when you're a federally chartered bank. You've got to deal with one, right? You don't have to deal with each state level stuff. We have more compliance and more regulatory things, I think, in a lot of respects. The big advantage, and one of the things that I think about building wealth and building success is the reason I can beat those companies and reason we have beat those companies is extreme focus. I'm not trying to be the best bank. I'm not trying to be the best everything. I'm trying to be the best mortgage lender. All we do is dominate the mortgage process. We're a big company, smart company, Chase, Wells farmer. These are great companies, obviously, but they got to do the positives. They got to do credit cards. They got to do boat loans. They got to do a bunch of things. And therefore, they're not extremely focused. I'm extremely focused. I got 9,300 people that focus on being the best wholesale mortgage lender in the country, and we have no question on what we're trying to do every day.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Compete with the biggest lenders in the world, and that's what we've done. And that's why our business has exploded. We've basically democratized technology, we've enabled the mortgage brokers to succeed and thrive by giving them, of course, the lowest rates, but beyond the lowest rates, it's the best technology and fastest process to close. Because I'm an interesting industry, nobody wants my product. Nobody wants a mortgage. They want to buy the house. They have to get a mortgage to do it. They want to save the money. They got to get a mortgage. We're selling a product nobody wants. We've got to make it faster, easier, cheaper, and that's what we've done with mortgage brokers.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we don't have a name brand recognition as the number one lender or even the number three or four or five, but we're number two overall lender. And this is how we think about it is our business is the exact same as everyone else's. The difference is we're wholesale, which means we offer lower rates and you have to get our rates through an independent mortgage broker. Mortgage brokers offer lower rates and fees to consumers. It's not my opinion. It's backed. It's backed up by data after data point. That if you go a loan to a mortgage broker at find a mortgagebroker.com or wherever you may go to find a local mortgage broker, you will get lower rates. And so what we've done is we provided, and that's always been the case, Barry, the difference is it's always been the case you get lower rates, but what's changed is we've enabled them with technology. So what we've done with our mortgage brokers, there's 50,000 loan officers throughout the country. You have to get a loan through a loan officer. They're either captive to one lender or they're independent. We work with the independents to say, hey, use our rates, use our technology, and we'll make it so you can.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right back to the grind and say, you know, I'm not spending that money. My life has not changed one inch since we weren't going Paul Bug. I'm still here at four in the morning. I'm still grinding until 6 30 at night. I still love what I do. Nothing's changed. And so, therefore, to me, it's not a big deal. But at the same time, I know it gets a lot of headlines and people talk to me about it. I get more people talking to me about that stuff than they used to, obviously. So that's been a little change in my life.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, that was obviously something that was new to me. You know, it's not like our company or our company valuation of $16.1 billion when we went public. And me, you know, that wasn't, the company didn't get the valuation or didn't grow when we went public. That's what we've been the whole time. But the going public put it out there in front of everybody, right? That the company's worth this and that, Matt, you might be worth this. And I don't pay attention to those numbers. The reality is I focus on how do I dominate my day-to-day? How do I help our company grow and win today? Money follows success. It's not the other way around. So I very rarely look at any money I have or money or profit or like someone's like, are you focused on the profits? I said, I'm focused on winning. I'm focused on dominating our competition. I'm focused on taking care of my team members and my clients. And when you do those things, you make a lot of money. Success is the focus money follows. And so the fact that I'm worth X dollars or whatever it may be that they put out there, it's cool to see on paper for a second.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We said, how do we make sure that we have the balance sheet and capital to compete with the biggest companies? Because we think we have the best platform and the best technology. But I have to have the cash and liquidity sources to do so. And so met with some people and ended up going through the process of going through a spec and becoming a public company, which basically made it so that we have access to the same liquidity. We can monetize some of the things we've done, but it wasn't about getting money out for me or for our company because I still own after the whole thing. I still own 94% of the company. The whole point was putting us on a platform that I have access to these bankers, access to the liquidity, access to being on a level playing field, put me on a level playing field, and let's compete head to head, and we'll see what happens. And that's what we're doing right now.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so when that happened, you see that cash is king in any business. And so you have a couple hundred million dollars to run your business, you say, gosh, we're competing like that. We're the number two overall lender. The people we're competing with are Rocket Mortgage, Wells Fargo, Chase and Bank of America. That's the top five. These are not little companies I'm competing with. And we said, guys, what's the advantage they have? They have access to liquidity and capital that I just don't have. I owned 100%. Me and my brother and dad own some percent, but there was no private equity. We had no investors in with us. It was just, you know, we built this thing from scratch.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A margin perspective and a profit perspective. And at the same time, one of the things that's key to our business is culture and team and family. And when the pandemic hit, no one knew what was going to happen. I didn't know, you didn't know, nobody knew what was going on. And I told our whole team at that point, he said, listen, guys, we will not lay off one person. Not one person will be laid off at our company. I've got your back. You've got my back. Don't worry about your job. We'll make it through this stronger. And obviously it turned out to be a record year. But the point was we showed family first. I said, you can't lay your brother off, so we don't lay each other off. We're family. And I think that resonated with our team members to the point where they said, hey, listen, he's all in with me. I'm all in with him. Let's go dominate. And that helped catapult us to a record year last year. And we're planning on doing more business this year.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We figured out okay, how do we band together, figure out how to handle the balance sheet concerns the Fed with rates lowering operational concerns, then people working from home, technology concerns, and not only do we manage through it, we thrived. And that was a big part of our story and success, you know, is, hey, everyone can do things when things are going well. What happens when you kind of get sucker punched a little bit with COVID and how do you survive and thrive? And that's what we did, and we have our best year of all time, not only from a volume perspective, but...”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, obviously, you know, talking about COVID and what happened with the Fed and everything. First off, there's no playbook for COVID. No one had it in their books. Like, what do you do with COVID comes in? How do you handle it with the Fed? It's unprecedented times, unheard of, crazy things happen. But when that stuff happened, the way we solve for it is we work as a team. It goes back to the core of teamwork, working together, figuring out how do we solve for different issues. And a lot of those things were short-term concerns, but the whole economy was shut down. I'm real big on our culture and our team, and we have 9,300 people here, and we all work here every day in the same location. We have about 1.5 million square feet, and we're all working in a building together. Sending everybody home was a big challenge because I never planned for work from home because that's not what we believe in here. And at the same time, people worry about their health, which is a scary thing. You didn't know what was going on. There's a lot of scary things going on. The Fed doing what the Fed did. A lot of crazy things happened, but we came out of it strong.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I was running the company probably starting about 0809, officially CEO maybe 2012 or 13. But those years running the business, trying to build the company to the point where we went to, and the final thing was we had a small retail division. And when I became the CEO in 2013, I think, the key was I made a couple decisions at that point, which was we're not doing retail. Retail is not as good for consumers, is not as good for loan options. So I actually cut a department and I moved them all to our wholesale channel and basically reran the wholesale business. So we didn't let anyone go. We just moved them to reallocate them to new teams and we really started exploding from then.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we never did the subprime loans. And so when those subprime loans all started crashing in 07, 08, 09, think of the old movie Forrest Gump, we were like bubba gump, shrimp. We were like one shrimp boat left standing. Like we were just doing the right type of loans focused on FHA and conventional. And we really grew because everyone else was worried about the problems that they had, all these loans, and we had never done that.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, so it was definitely an interesting time to have joined what I would speak about that is this. Back then we were so small and we didn't really know what we were doing. We were trying to figure out things, but we didn't do a lot of those loans, subprime loans. So the whole point was back then we were just trying to make it. I remember I was a sales rep in 2006 or 5 and I remember calling my father one time and saying, hey, Dad, we're doing 50 loans a month in relationship. We're going to do $65,000 closings this month. So it's a whole different world, right? Doing 50 loans a month back then. I remember telling my dad, I go, dad, you know, if we did these types of loans, which are subprime, we could get a lot more business. I remember my dad saying to me, Matt, you know, we're not in here just to make money. We're not going to lend someone money if they can't pay it back. So lending someone $200,000 when their house is worth $175, we're just not going to do it. Now, we didn't make a big stand because they just went somewhere else and got the loan done.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The bottom up, and really to understand not only our clients but the consumers, consumers, clients, and our team members and process. And so it was really just great going all through that process. I had no desire, no idea, no ambition of saying, hey, let's build this to a 9,000 plus company. I mean, we were just trying to make it, trying to survive at that point. And that's what we were doing. Learning the business from the ground up was a huge advantage. And I still implement that with new people at our company to this day.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was a great thing. I played basketball for four years, then I got a chance to coach for a year, so I got to be on the bench sitting there with Tom Izzo, learning from him in meetings. And I got offered to college basketball job to be one of the youngest assistants or the youngest assistant in college basketball division one at the time. I turned it down because my father said, hey, maybe you can, you know, and Izzo said to me, actually, maybe you can take some of the things you learned in basketball and tie it to business, maybe do something bigger than me a head coach. And then my dad said, I got a little mortgage coming. My dad's a lawyer. He's never actually worked here at the mortgage. He's just like an entrepreneur. He has like seven or eight different businesses. This was a 12 person mortgage company in 2003. I joined as a 12 person, and it's been a great experience all the way through. What I started at, though, was the bottom job, everything. I used to say that every job here, but I got $9,300 people, so I can't do every job now. But back then, I took faxes off the fax machine. I learned underwriting. I learned closing. I learned everything from...”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, it was a great experience. I wasn't that great of a basketball player. I was very good in high school, obviously. Became a walk on it at Michigan State for Coach Izzo and a great experience. My first three years, we went to three Final Fours. We won a national championship. I got in the game when we were up by a lot, so I wasn't a star player by any means. But I learned so much about team, about work ethic, about camaraderie, about building something special, about having big goals and working for them. I learned so much during my time there, and some people ask me, well, what translates the business? I say, I can talk for eight hours about that because everything translates the business if you're paying attention and listening and learning. And so I had a great experience playing there once again, winning the national championship, but just making lifelong friends and learning from Tom Izzo for many of those years.”
2021-07-16 · Masters in Business · Mat Ishbia on Leadership and Mortgage Lending · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source