The last day of 2007 was a day of sadness and hope. The year was coming to an end I as I reflected upon the previous 364 days I had a chance to take inventory of the things I had accomplished in that year and identify the opportunities lost or at least not capitalized on. I also recognized the amount of time I spent on personal growth, recovering from a failed business. The decision to close that business took my heart and soul away when I did that just a little over a year ago. I don’t think that when I closed the business I realized just how emotionally devastating to me it was. When I did so, I went to work for a friend who I had played soccer with over 20 years ago and he is the type of person who is always upbeat. I used that environment to bolster my emotions while I worked through the pain and tried to plan the rest of my professional life.
As some of you may know, I spent many hours riding a bike or hitting golf balls while I tried to find what I really loved doing. I found myself mentoring and coaching loan officers and realtors, thus I recognized that being back in sales management was the calling I needed to answer. I answered that calling and have found myself enjoying the challenge each and every day. I work with a group of people that share similar vision for how to run a mortgage company. Loan officers that believe in doing the right thing and support people that truly care about taking care of the customer. We are positioned to grow if the market allows us to but will be successful if we stay the current size. If I knew what I wanted when I closed my company I could not have asked for a better set of circumstances. So again I give thanks to the people at First Integrity Mortgage; the company that hired me when I closed my company. The people there did all that I asked and gave me all the room to flourish while I found myself.
Now that I have moved on to Cornerstone I want to take the time to thank them for having the belief in my management skills to bring me back into the game. At my new company a special thanks goes to Brad Bradford for championing the concept of hiring me. Never underestimate the relationships that you form in your life. Brad was a loan officer with me at a mortgage company over 10 years ago. We never developed a friendship, but a healthy respect for how we both went about doing our business. Had I known that he would become a key part of my life 10 years later I now know that I would have done more to build that friendship. But alas, hindsight is 20/20 and unfortunately, the younger we are the less foresight we have to build those relationships. I guess that only thing we can hope is that we are smart enough to not burn bridges.
So much for the sadness, now on to the hope; As Monday’s bond market came to a close it finished the year with a strong rally. We opened Wednesday with a continuation of that rally. As of the time I write this, our pricing is within 25 basis points of our lowest point in 2007 and that was as low as we had seen since 2003. Interest rates are below 6% again and should stay there for at least the coming week. This should give me as well as the loan officers I work with an opportunity to start the year off with a few good months. With this being an election year we can hope that rates will hold steady and we won’t see any major upward movement. Although with gas going up, the only thing we know that will affect is the spending power of the American consumer. Either way, I am optimistic that the business plan that I have spent the last 3 years developing will flourish this year and all those that utilize it will reach and surpass their goals.
For comments or questions please contact ChrisScheer at cscheer@cornerstonestl.com or 314.223.9824.
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