Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Pat Gillen, VP of Sales with American Financing

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Fifteen years of experience managing financial operations, corporate divisions, and staff to achieve record-breaking production and deliver excellent customer service. Rapidly promoted throughout career for executive leadership, effective sales management, corporate restructuring, staff development, and executive decision making. Produced successful divisions and the top branch in corporate history by recruiting and managing executives, management, and sales teams.Learn more: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickgillenColorado Real Estate Leaders https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/colorado-real-estate-leaders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-pat-gillen-vp-of-sales-with-american-financing

Welcome to the Colorado Real Estate Leaders Podcast, brought to you by Trailstone Insurance Group, bringing you interviews with Colorado's best real estate and mortgage professionals, empowering you to understand the current trends in the housing market so you can make the American dream your reality. Enjoy today's episode. It's a great day in Colorado and welcome to the Colorado Real Estate Leaders podcast. Today we have with us Pat Gillen, who's the VP of Sales with American Financing. Pat, welcome to the program. Hey, how's it going? Hey, doing really good. Looking forward to chatting with you. It's always great to learn from people from their various perspectives of life and business. So get us started first with what's your story?

What's your background and how did you get into the real estate and financing industry? If you don't mind, first off, I just wanted to say how much I like your guys' podcast. I know it comes out on Fridays and it's become a routine in mind to, to pull it up on my way home from a stressful week of work. And I'm excited every week to learn about somebody to do in Colorado market. So thank you guys for that. Yes. Thank you.

How I got in the mortgage industry. I know everyone's, that's just such a fun question. Everyone's story so unique. But I honestly, I wanted nothing to do with the mortgage industry. And somehow I got into it anyway. In my case, I graduated, you know, mid-2000s.

My first job out of college was a consumer finance company. I did what I thought I was supposed to do as a young adult, you know, work for a big company and work as hard as I can and work my way up. And that's what I did. And two and a half years later, I was promoted to running an office in Longmont. My company even gave me a relocation package, sold my half. house in Littleton and I had a house under contract in Longmont and you probably can figure out where this story is going when we're talking about 2008 but yeah I got uh they they let me know

they were shuttered down the division and uh all of a sudden I had no job and and I was homeless um it was uh it was it was it was crazy to me um nobody ever it just didn't make sense like I thought if you if you work as hard as you possibly could and you were good at your job, like you can't lose your job. Like that that wasn't a possibility. Like that idea didn't even make sense. And I grew up in the mean streets of Highlands Ranch, so I should have known better. But I did what any adult in their 20s would do.

and I got back together with my ex-girlfriend and moved in with her. Well, it's better than moving back here with mom and dad. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that, though. Hey, there's always that possibility. But guess what you did? You didn't go, you know, suck your thumb in the corner and go, what am I going to do? You were like, okay, cool.

Here's the next step. And then you built from there and built from there. Well, yeah, that still maybe wasn't the best idea, but it worked at the time. But like what just what a blessing for my generation or people in my, you know, age range that in our, in our 20s, we went through that 2007, 2009 economic crisis, that great recession. I mean, it just, it just set us up for such success to be able to go through what, what I went through. And a lot of us went through, which will, you know, obviously come up later with 2000. 22, but it's just given me so much perspective and gratitude for everything I have now.

I just think it's such a blessing that in my 20s was able to go through that and just have the right frame of mind for anything going on after that. You know, what if your parents owned a mortgage finance company and had thousands and thousands of clients and you got out of school and they said, here's your VP job and here's this book of business. All the real estate agents are referring business and clients are calling you and you'd never have to work for anything. Well, that's like the old cliche trust fund baby. Like nobody appreciates money when it's just handed to them. Well, that's the opposite of what you're talking about here. You got the stool knocked out from under you and you had to be fortified,

figure out a way out, roll up your sleeves and get her done. And now you appreciate any level of success that you have because you remember what it felt like at the very beginning. And like you just mentioned, that was 07, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, right? Because it kind of kept on and on. And then there's this other little thing called COVID. Well, there's something going to be coming up in the future. It might be some other thing. There's always these ebbs and flows in life and business that we got to go, okay,

here's what I woke up today to deal with. Let's get her done. And you work the problem and it might be different, but you've got to handle it the same way going, what do I got to do to get through it, over it, around it? under it. Cool. That's just a mindset shift. And I, you nailed it so much. I remember going through that too and looking around and seeing, you know, so many people that were, got their jobs and their businesses from, you know, family relationships. And at the, at the time, like, it was like, why can't I figure this out? Like, you know, I always felt so successful. And,

you know, going through that was just really, really life. changing. So I just am so blessed for so blessed for that. But anyways, I was, I was pretty little, little shook and scared to be, to be honest. And I was, you know, going through all the job boards and things like that. And there was a, there was a mortgage job that, that just, it looked like it would match up. So, so I didn't, I know I didn't want to get into to mortgages, especially during that time from, you know, all the bad things you're hearing of what they did to the, the economy and how, you know, shady things were. But I didn't know what else to do. So I applied and went in and interviewed.

And with my resume with the Consumer Finance Office, it really looked like I knew mortgages. I didn't. I didn't know that I didn't, but I didn't. So the boss said this looks this looks great, you know, sat me down at the desk. When I started, I started the first week of January 2009. It was a smaller, it was a smaller shop that they were surviving at the time of just off of Loramadil.com leave. So that's a good way to learn.

But he was, I remember he was showing me how the phone worked and how you, how you catch the new the new lower my bills.com leads that are coming in. And I looked at him and I said, you know what? I haven't earned this yet. I'm only going to, you know, don't worry about it. I'm only going to call the old leads. He looked, he looked at me like I was a little bit crazy. He was like, okay.

And walked away. And then I just got after it. I had my financial calculator, was ripping through people's credit report. selling, you know, figuring out how to sell debt consolidation and term to own with, you know, paying everything off faster and in savings. And a week and half later, he walks up to my desk. And I just, you know, I was, I had 12, I had these big, huge manila folders just filled with, filled with paper. So my desk was just full of folders. And he's like, what, hey, how's it going? I'm like, it's going great. He's like, well, what? What? What? What?

What are all the, what's all this stuff on your desk? I was like, these are, these are the loans I'm working on. He's like, what loans are working on? What are you talking about? This was, the HVC didn't come, or HVC didn't come out until May 2009 that year so you could order your own appraisal. So I was figuring all of that out. But he was like, you haven't turned these loans into processing.

We haven't got, you know, title ordered. You know, we need to get these loans to underwriting. And he looked and, he looked, me and as a joke he's like are any of these loans even locked and I looked back at him and I and I knew I was in trouble but I was like you I was like you guys lock loans he paused for a second uh I paused for a second I looked at him and and after a couple awkward uh moments he goes well it looks like you're you're good at disc, so let's figure it out. Yeah, you've, you've hustled and gotten a bunch of stuff in motion.

Now let's do a little polish and tweak it and fine-tune it and get them across the finish line. Yep. And I'm sure we all know what this feeling is like, but I just got bit by that, by that mortgage bug. And I just, in the in the moment at that time, good or bad, I just, I just, I just had to feeling, well, I guess this is what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life. So, all right. So that's, uh, that's, that's, that's how I got into the mortgage industry. So that's how you got in the industry that was in 2009. When did you, uh, move over to American family and, and why did you go there? I've, uh, I've been at American financing. I'll be here, I'll be here for 10 years in just a couple months. Okay. Um, and actually there was a,

couple people that worked for American financing that used to work for that that company I was just talking about that were we're just getting me hitting me up all the time to that I just had to check out American financing and you've I just always would hear American this is back in 2013 but you'd always hear American financing on every single commercial all over the place and It kind of sounded a little corny to me. So I was like, oh, okay, okay. And then finally I was like, you know, I'll all come by.

And I stopped by, you know, met him, you know, went through the sales floor. And like, it was just so, it was just, it was crazy. Like it was such great energy. You could just feel the vibe. I just remember walking the sales floor, the buzz around. the office. Like, it, it, it was just something special. And it hit me. I was like, this is, immediately, I'm like, this is, this is where I want to be. And I got, I got, I got started there. That's awesome. That's really cool. So now obviously you start, um, in different pockets of time.

It's like the refy boom, the purchase boom. And it shifts back and forth. But in reality, it doesn't matter whether you're, you know, in one market or the other refire purchase, people have needs on understanding what they should do regarding their mortgage, getting a new one, up, scaling their house for home improvement or refinancing. What are you finding is the typical client that you're working with? Well, we, I just looked at some of the numbers today. 50, if everything I was looking at, correct, 53% of our customers, of our purchase closings is your first-time homebuyer, which is great. And first-time homebuyers, it's what drives you.

It's what gives you the most satisfaction and passion for what you do. But what I say is our ideal customer is our repeat customer. There's three ways that I believe we need to measure ourselves of taking care of the, you know, all the interactions we have. I call it the three hours. One is repeat refinances, repeat purchases, and referrals. So what our ideal customers are taking care of all the people we work with and having them be turned into the three R's to build something that's really, to build a business that just keeps compounding and growing and becoming stronger and stronger. You know, a lot of people would go, you know, hey, do you want happy clients?

And you're like, yeah, no, you really don't want happy clients because they're sort of apathetic. They're like, yeah, that's cool. Let's fine enough. You want raving fans. So what would you say, Pat, that you guys do or you personally do to make sure that your clients are raving fans to then set the stage for those repeat and referrals? It's tough because every situation is so different. And sometimes people don't truly know what you were actually able to pull off and how difficult things might have been.

People don't really know how good you are until things go bad. So I guess the biggest thing that we have is just such an amazing team, such amazing well-run departments from our operations and underwriting. We have, I believe, one of our probably our best run department is our credit care run by Evan Gilbert. He just last month alone, he had his hand in saving 31 files with credit care. That starts a lot with, you know, our customers coming in, you know, finding ways to fix, improve their credit, handle very difficult situation.

So to answer your question is, is we get a lot of people that don't think that owning a home or being able to refinances even a possibility and being able to find them, to show them the way and show them their path of how they can accomplish their goals through things like our credit care division with Evan, which is free,

are Nate Barrett, who runs our scenario desk is just so talented, just knows everything in and out is in so many files. We jump on the phone with our underwrite. I mean, everything, it's so great to have, you know, just such a great space, such everything in office, everything in house. Like the second things don't look right. I mean, we can pick up the phone. We're speaking immediately with our underwriters, working with our scenario desk, credit care. Like we just have such a great team and such great departments just working and pulling together for sort of the same goal.

So that's, I know people don't, customers don't really realize sometimes how difficult their transactions, you know, maybe, but a lot, you know, you said a huge point there where people don't know until something goes wrong. And I remember saying this to someone jokingly, it's almost like you want to throw a wrench in the work. to get something to get all messed up so that you can be the hero and save it. But you don't ever want to do that. But here's just a takeaway is you don't want to say to the client, you know, like, hey, I got to update you real quick and start going through this whole litany of the problem because their mind is going, you know, in 19 directions. You know, the sky is falling.

But what, you know, the way I'm sure you guys are phrasing it is we've got this solved. Everything's good to go. But let me tell you something. What we did was. And so now when they're, you know, they already know that we're good to go. But when they're hearing like, we have our. our specialist that went to a bat for you this, and we got this exception, and we figured out this way. And I love hearing that you've got a scenario desk, and you've got a, like,

specific departments that are handling how to creatively solve this problem or how to fix this issue or how to structure it the right way. That's typically falling on the shoulders of the individual loan officer. You've got whole departments for that. Yep. I mean, in our loan officers, who we have now, especially in our purchase division, I mean, most of them were managers at our company, at other companies. I mean, we've really, you know, have the absolute best of the best that their knowledge is crazy. But we, that's that's compounded to another level with, with our support systems and our other departments that we have. Well, and you just know that what you're saying has that element of truth to it because there's a really powerful filter that would prove that you're right or wrong. And it's called online Google reviews. And if I'm reading correctly, you guys have a review or two, right? We cleared 7,000 a few weeks ago, I believe. I'm staring at Google right now, and it's today 7,000. So you can talk a big talk and say, we treat people right. And if you're not, you know, telling the truth and you really are not treating people right, it's going to be reflected right

there. And you've got a 4.7 rating with over 7,000 reviews. That, that is all the proof you need. That is monstrous. It is a lot. I'm glad you looked that up. And I'm glad I knew with that. I'm glad I knew that number too. Yep. thing that that to me really shows it in our in our numbers is you know I'm looking at January, February, March, and April this year. And every single month, our number of repeat closings has gone up. Our number of repeat referrals has gone up. So, I mean, it's taking care of people. I'm looking right at it. And every month, we keep just doing better and better and better. You know, that's, and we could go down the path of, you know, the raw, raw personal development kind of a thing, you know, for hours on end here.

But in reality, you've probably heard this before. You know, we don't compete against other people as much as we compete against ourselves. And that's what you just described there. Hey, if we can compete against our previous quarter or month numbers and we're bettering our repeat and referrals, that's where we're focused on. Yeah, yeah, the other guys out there we need to do well. But boy, if we're getting more referrals, more repeat. that's the foundation of success because we know we did a good job and they came back to us. We know we did a good job and they trust us enough to refer us to their friend.

And that's a big, big hit on your reputation if you refer someone and then you don't do a good job. So tracking that metric alone is just a really huge focus. I like that. And one thing that is very, very clear with us that I make sure is we, We want the best for everybody. Like, you know, people that used to work here that don't anymore, you know, maybe some of our competition. Like, I speak with a lot of those people, you know, every week of, you know, seeing what they're doing, like truly rooting them on. You know, I get plenty of help and support and advice from, you know, our community.

That's one reason I love your podcast is learning about other people. And like, we, like, we have a real abundance mentality here. Like, we're not in competition with everybody. We want the best for, you know, we want the best for everybody. I want, we're, I want one of my, one of my, you know, core convictions is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, you know, constantly building relationships. And, and we, we want to spread good vibes out there to everybody.

So, I mean, we want everyone to be successful. and as good as possible. It's just a real abundance mentality. It's something that's important in our culture. I love it. Well, Pat, it's been just a sincere pleasure learning from you, chatting with you, hearing about your journey and your story and the great work that you're doing. So if someone is listening to this, wanted to find out more and reach out, connect with you guys.

What's the best way that they can do that? You just, I know everybody typically gives their cell phone. That's what the most comfortable with. I 100% am. my cell phone is 303, 908, 9559. Some people are a little more comfortable on LinkedIn. I've never not responded to a message. I've responded to every single message.

If that's something that you're more comfortable with, hit me up on LinkedIn. You know, Patrick.gillen. And my email's great, obviously, too. If that's how you want to do it, I'll make sure, you know, everything's responded to as well. Pat. dot gilland at Americanfinancing.net. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Thank you, guys. That was really fun. Thank you for listening

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