Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Jen and Andrew Gallegos, Loan Officers with New American Funding

Episode Date: October 1, 2023

Andrew Gallegos is a Mortgage Lender and leads an amazing team in Lakewood, CO that produces in the top 1% of mortgage lenders year over year in the United States. He got into the business in 2010 and is proudest of the relationships he has built with his clients and referral partners. He has almost 700 5-star reviews and values himself on providing a wonderful and unforgettable customer experience.Jen Gallegos joined Andrew and his mortgage team after being an educational leader for over a decade. Previously, she oversaw discipline and attendance for over 160 schools in Jeffco Schools, facilitated leadership development training to principals and school administrators, and she was also previously a school principal and high school dance coach. She continues to facilitate and lead leadership development training for many school districts in the state and is proud to continue being a leader in this space in education in her free time.They also are hosts and producers of the Headed Home Podcast, which they created in 2019 to unearth the secrets behind how incredible individuals smash their goals, tackle challenges, and excel in today’s dynamic world.Jen and Andrew feel so grateful that they are each other’s best friends and are parents to two beautiful children. They also find themselves with many hobbies. Andrew loves playing basketball, golf, or any game or activity that challenges him. Jen loves to hike, dance, climb mountains, make people laugh, and wander the world.They believe in personal growth, getting better every day, living with gratitude, treating others the way you want to be treated, and keeping perspective. If you share similar values, please connect with them!Learn more:https://www.newamericanfunding.com/mortgage-loans/andrewgallegosElite Real Estate Leaders Podcasthttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/elite-real-estate-leaders-podcastSource: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-jen-and-andrew-gallegos-loan-officers-with-new-american-funding

Welcome to the Elite Real Estate Leaders Podcast, brought to you by Trailstone Insurance Group, bringing you interviews with the best real estate and mortgage professionals, empowering you to understand the current trends in the housing market so that you make the American dream your reality. Enjoy today's episode. Welcome to the Elite Real Estate Leaders podcast today we have with us, Jen and Andrew Gallagos, loan officers with new American funding. Jen and Andrew, welcome to the program. Hey, thanks for having us today.

Thank you for having us. We're excited. Hey, yeah, I always love learning from people and it sounds cliche to say that, but it just seems like every time you talk to someone, you know, in business, you pick up a nuance or an aspect or a piece of a nugget of knowledge. So let's start off before we dive into how you do what you do and who you do it for. What's your story? How did you get into the mortgage industry?

Well, Mike, I'll tell you. my story into the mortgage industry is a unique one. I was bartending and waiting tables. I was 28 years old. I had just graduated from Metro State College, had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And my uncle was running a mortgage branch in downtown Littleton, Colorado. And the branch that he ran was a house with a yard. And I was actually working for my dad's company, which was a landscape company. So we'd go around and do weekly lawn maintenance for different houses across the state. And that mortgage house was one of our accounts. So I was actually mowing the lawn at the mortgage company when my uncle came out and talked to me and asked me if I wanted a job. So that's how I got

in the mortgage business, man. And it was, I had never owned a house. Yeah, that's, that's a roundabout way, it did. Absolutely. Knew nothing about, you know, the finance industry. So I had a lot to learn when I got in, but it was a, it was a fun way to, uh, and what year was that? That was 2010. So it was 13 years ago. So that was on the tail end of the big economic meltdown. We were just barely hinting it coming out of it, but still a little rocky, right? Yeah, it was right after the crash. And, yeah, It worked in my favor because a lot of the older loan officers that had been in the industry for a long time were really frustrated with the changes that came out of that. You know, they were doing a lot of no document loans. Underwriting was very different, you know, before the crash compared to after the crash.

And so when I got in, everything had already tightened up. And so that's the way that I learned it. Yeah. So it was almost an advantage learning it that way. Yeah. And I had a very different. I mean, Andrew, Andrew convinced me to get in. But previous to this, I was really into the education. Like, I worked at schools. I worked at, you know, in school districts doing various things. I was a school principal. And then spent the last five years before Andrew and I started working together overseeing discipline and attendance for a school district that had over 85,000 kids. So I, um, I, learned, I mean, what's great about it, though, is I'm not phased by much anymore. And, you know,

I think that a lot of those jobs that I had taught me a lot about leadership and entrepreneurship. I mean, there's a lot of skill set, skills that I got from that. So yeah, and Andrew and I work together now and we just, we just love hanging out together all day, don't we? You're smiling at me right now, so you must mean that. teamwork makes the dream work. It sounds like there's many a story that we can get into on another episode. I mean, I mean, Mike,

we've known each other since we were 14. So at this point, it's like, yeah, we met in eighth grade. And I had a huge crush on Jen and just never stopped. Oh, that's so cute.

I love that. Yeah, well, you guys seem like you have just really great values. I've seen your podcast. I know you have your own. And I love that about you guys is, you know, I see some of your posts about your kids and teaching them the same type of values. So just give us maybe like one situation that really shaped you and your values.

Yeah. So a few years ago back in, it was in 2016, we had a one year old and a brand new baby. And a few weeks after our second baby, we found out that I was very sick. to have a pretty rare brain surgery done. So we spent the next year kind of figuring out no one, no one actually knew what the answers were. And so I actually spent a year like reading neurosurgical journal articles and tracking down what the answers were and we had to travel to a bunch of doctors and ended up finding a couple doctors out east that were really the only ones able to do the surgery that I needed. And so, as you can imagine having two little babies and having this,

like, huge health issue, it was a really big flip to our lives. And I think, you know, when you're thinking about hard times that you have, man, I always look at, I mean, obviously, hard times are hard. But I'm always looking for like the lesson in what we can learn. And Andrew and I just got so much out of that experience. I mean, I think. walking out of that experience allowed us to have very like crystal clear values and really forced us to rethink what was important to us. So, you know, I think coming out of that and it's been, geez, almost seven years. I can't even believe that. But I think I have just like walked away. And I, I know Andrew has to with just like a very clear vision of like what what I want my life to look

like what is important to me, what's not important to me. And I just, you know, I think we both have felt very clear on that. And so I think, you know, sometimes we can look at hard times as is, you know, just this really negative thing. But ultimately, for me anyway, and I know for other people, you learn the most, the most valuable lessons of your life are always in those darker times. So I think that's really where we've, you know, taken the lessons that we've learned and really applied them to our lives. Wow. You know, you mentioned something that made me think of a question slash observation.

Number one, it's like what you said, you know, the hard times we had clarity. I think that sometimes if you were, you know, you hear from a life coach that goes, you know, you ask clients, what do you want in life? And a big percentage of people give you a blank stare. Like, I don't even know what I want. Oh, I just don't like, I don't like where I'm at, but I don't know what I want. So you said, you know, it helped us clarify. what we want what we don't want. And it's almost like you've got this piece of paper with one side is

here's what we want. The other side is what we don't want. And knowing and articulating what you don't want is as an important points as what you do want. So talk a little bit about how you guys had to figure out what you didn't want so that you then could really clarify a nice list of here's where we want to be. Well, I think that how we figured out what we don't want was going through that hard time. Yeah. And realizing that what we thought we wanted was not actually what we wanted. You know, we had in Tia mentioned the podcast that we do. It's called the Head at Home podcast.

And that spawned out of this situation where we had just built and bought this brand new home. that was huge and beautiful and expensive. And, you know, it was this image of what we thought we wanted our life to look like. And it actually just moved in there, you know, before all of the health issues. So when we had the health issues come up, we realized like, okay, like this house really isn't all that important. Our health is really important. Our family is really important.

Our freedom, our flexibility. Those are the values that we wanted to tie ourselves to. And, you know, luckily for us, obviously it was a terrible situation, but luckily for us, it opened our eyes to some of those values that we wanted to push for moving forward. And I think from then on, we, I mean, I'm looking at them right now in Andrew's office. We have our values up on our wall, but like every decision that we make now is connected to that. And so it just feels easier.

And, you know, when you really know who you are as a person and what you know you stand for, and what your values are because your decision-making process is much easier and much more filtered in a positive way. Yeah. Because something comes up in the spur of the moment that could throw you for a loop, but you know that, okay, well, here's how we're dialed in. Here's how we're wired and here's our value system and whatnot. So you can make those decisions because you've done that hard work up front and then it becomes

easier. Now, decision might be hard because of whatever the situation is, but it's not hard to know what to do because you've dialed it in. Exactly. And I think a level of comfort knowing if it's the right decision that like we've gone through really hard situations before. So we can sit in a hard situation if we know it's the right thing to do. Yeah. So all of that turns into the most perfect successful business ever that you've never had any bad days. You always have bigger months than the month. No, of course not. But but you've had a level of success. So how would you define success? And I know that you're in the top 1% of production for mortgage lenders. So is there monetary success? Is there business success?

Or is there a mixture of the two? Yeah. Great questions. I think that from a success standpoint, when, at least for me personally, when I think about that, I mean, it's multifaceted, right? And the first thing that comes to my mind when defining it is living in a way that makes you proud of yourself. And for me, that's having integrity.

It's showing up for my family and my team and my business partners every day. It's being comfortable in my own skin. Like Jen said, being comfortable with the decisions that you make, taking steps every day toward a better version of myself. And the other side of that, of course, business is a very important aspect of it. But I don't think you can have a successful business, at least long term, without having a balanced life as well. and putting effort and the same amount of energy in some cases into being a better dad and

husband and becoming stronger physically and mentally and just kind of continuing to push ourselves out of our comfort zones to keep growing in all of those other areas as well so that we can stay successful in business. You know, it's like, yes, balance. That's huge. And we've heard the analogy of the three-legged stool. And you know, you can't just be the super success in business, but then your home life is a wreck.

That doesn't work. but it reminds me of a quote, you know, like, do you have 10 years of experience or do you have one year of experience 10 times over? And it sounds to me like you guys build upon each year, learn from things personally, professionally, spiritually, financially, all of that. And it's like, okay, where can I polish and tweak? So it really becomes that whole, you know, it's not the attainment of X goal. Yeah, I want to get to this place. But then we set a new goal and recalibrate, but it's who we're becoming personally professionally as we get to that goal, right?

Yeah, I think, you know, we just, and I don't know if this is a Jim Rohn quote, but we just really deeply believe in this idea of like work harder on yourself than you do on your job. And that really transfers over into every part of your life. And I know, you know, whether, regardless of whatever career I'm in, like I'm, if I'm a better, if I'm healthy and I'm a better parent and I'm a better wife and all those pieces. Like I'm going to actually be better at my job because I as a human being, I'm in a better place when I walk into my role at work. And so, you know, we just really, really are super intentional about, you know, figuring out

ways in which we can always constantly be growing, whether that's, you know, through, you know, reading or learning new things or tweaking things. And we, you know, talk every week on Sundays as a family with our kids about like, hey, what worked this week? What didn't? Like, what did we learn? And just trying to tweak and and figure that out because, you know, you never really do finish hitting those goals that you want. Like, you should constantly be tweaking and adjusting and moving past what you're wanting to set. And so that's really what we have tried to do and and what our definition of success really is, is just constant growth. And you've also created, it sounds like, just kind of an ecosystem with each other.

And, you know, this process that you followed in your personal life, which makes me curious, what type of systems and structures do you use to make your team successful in business? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, from a business standpoint, we're hyper-focused on creating a client, experience that culminates with our client becoming a raving fan. And in the way that we define a raving fan in our business is someone who does three things. One, gives us a five-star testimonial online. Two, works with us on every mortgage transaction that they ever do in the future. And then three, refers their friends and their families and their acquaintances to us. So checklists are a big part of that. weekly team meetings where we all contribute ideas on how to make the client experience better,

learning from mistakes. Those are all a part of that from a business standpoint. And then, you know, maybe you can touch on some of the personal systems that we do. I think, I mean, I'm, we're sort of dweeps about systems around here. So like, we have a joke that like, you know, if something's not working, we're going to like put a system in. So we have systems for all sorts of things, which we like to joke about a lot. But I mean, really the, I would say the biggest system that we have that we feel is a, you know, a direct component of being successful in our business is around morning routines. And, you know, when things get tough in business or when things get tough in your life, one thing that we found is like if you have that consistent habit,

where you are doing specific things to like, you know, feed your body in healthy ways, whether that's, it should be working out or meditating or, you know, all of those pieces reading, you know, cold showers, all of that, it really kind of sets you back, you know, sets you in a position that if you have a setback where you have a really hard day, you start over and you have control over the first part of your day. And that can really change and reframe how you are looking at difficulties or setbacks that you're facing. So I think that's one of the things that we do. But, you know, ultimately, there's lots of systems and routines that you can have in your personal life or, you know, in business, you know, checklist included. But like that just streamlines things

so that you can ensure like you are being successful in all of those things you're trying to implement. Yeah. And like Mike said, you know, never make that same mistake twice. You don't want to just keep, you know, living the same year over and over. You know, it's adding something to the system every time a mistake is made, every time something's missed so that the next time you don't miss that and you're more efficient. You know, I find myself and we can get into the weeds of, you know, standard operating procedures and all that. But just from a general rule, I find myself going, ooh, this worked really, really well. How can I do it the same way, but with less involvement? Or this didn't work really good. So how can I prevent it from happen again? And so many times I'll

set up a project and I use, you know, Trello for project management, but any tool out there. But I've got like, you know, 37 steps when I set up this one certain project, I go, boom, here's all the steps. And then I go, I'm doing this. My assistant is doing this. My assistant. I'm doing this. And all of a sudden. sudden, now I don't need to worry like, oh, what's next? What's next? Or did I miss anything? So I think systems are really powerful. And then many times you can deviate from that and go, ooh, I'm going to enhance it by doing this. So you don't need to feel like you're a robot, but you at least need to have some systems in place to make sure the output, the outcome,

is what you want and delivers that to your clients. And I know in your business, you want that exact same thing. Oh, absolutely. And you'd be surprised. Like we work with a lot of calls colleagues and in referral partners and we're talking about how to help them become more successful. And step one, like make sure that your system for delivering an amazing experience, no matter what you're doing, make sure that's written down, right? Because like you said, you have to start somewhere by writing it down, who's doing what. And then that way, once it's written down and you can edit that moving forward, then you can add and subtract and make it better. But just writing it down is such a huge piece.

Yeah. Yeah. Because it kind of gives you, you know, where do you want to be? You get that. Here's where I am. And then where were the bumps in the road? Well, we're going to smooth it out by doing this. But you don't know where you're headed until you, or you've got to know where you're headed, but you never know what the steps are until you know where you're starting from. So I think that is huge. I love your example about how you start the day or, or, you know, in the day or your weekend routine, you know, with the kids. I mean, you just, I've even heard of, I forget who said it, but many, many financial people will go, you know, once a month we sit down as a husband and wife team and we go, how are we doing financially? Are we making the right to sit? And whatever, you know,

like some people are going to feel like that's a little much, but you need to have, you can't just blindly go through life personally or professionally, or let's face it, physically, mentally, spiritually, all the legs to have that balance. You need to have those systems in place, Yeah, I think if, I mean, I truly, and by the way, we do have a monthly financial meeting with each other. Well, there you go. It's really romantic. Love that. Yeah, right. Right before date night. It's on our calendar. Yeah. But I think, you know, the older I get and the more that I want to do or the, you know, whether that's with our family or whatever, I mean, I live and die by my calendar. And so, you know, I really understand that if I don't have a system or a process for it, it's not going to happen. I mean, that's similar to a more. routine. Like if I don't have a system or routine for, you know, taking care of my body and like working out, it's not going to happen. And so I have to be really intentional and thoughtful about

proactively scheduling stuff because if I'm just trying to do it in the moment, that that instant gratification is always going to win out, right? Like I don't want to do it if it's in my calendar. Yeah, I don't want to get up off the couch. I don't want to get out of bed or whatever the case is. Or I'm just going to get out of bed and just rock right into the computer and emails. But hold on. maybe we need to pre-frame the day and all of those things. And I've heard it said before you need to come up with your non-negotiables. In your day, what are the non-negotiables that you will and must do and never deviate from? And many times, this is just my personal opinion, but you structure your family stuff as your non-negotiables.

And if the kids have a soccer game, baseball, basketball, you're going to structure that in there as a non-negotiable. And then you're going to work your work around that because at the end of the, their high school career, college career, you don't want to look back and go, I guess I should have gone to some of their games. Right. Well, and it's the term discipline equals freedom. That's a Jocko Willink quote where in it, I love it because when you think about putting everything into the calendar and time blocking all of those things, those non-negotiables and then

adding everything else, it sounds overwhelming and it sounds like, well, this, then I'm never going to be spontaneous. I'm never going to have any free time. I'm just a slave to my calendar. when really it's the opposite. If you have the discipline to make sure that you're time blocking and you're hitting all of those things is going to give you the freedom to be spontaneous and to do the other things that you want to do.

Exactly. Well, I think we could, sounds like we could go on for a whole weekend seminar on this. We probably could. We probably could. And still be scratching the surface. But it's that kind of approach and mentality that a team like you guys, if people are listening to this gone, that's who I want to. talk to because they've got some things figured out.

Maybe not life and everything's perfect. But, you know, if you can kind of be around people that have that energy, it's really rewarding. So Andrew and Jen, thank you so much for coming on. If someone is interested in reaching out and connecting with you guys, what is the best way they can do that? Yeah. So you can find us on Instagram, Jen underscore Glegos, or you can find Andrew at AJG loans.

I highly recommend following us because I like to make fun of him on that sometimes. I think you're going to say, I highly recommend following you. I'm funny. Me or him. Yeah, yeah. And then do you want to give your email and phone number? Yeah, my phone number, my cell phone is 720432-1308. And my email is Andrew.gallegos at knath, inc.com.

And we'd love to hear from you. Awesome. Well, guys, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Well, thank you. We appreciate it. It was our pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Elite Real Estate Leaders podcast, brought to you by Trailstone Insurance Group.

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