January 15, 2025 • 35 mins
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EPISODE DESCRIPTION
In this episode, Bekim is joined by Chris Colasanti. Chris is a founding team member of Rocket Mortgage Canada and the VP of Strategy & Analytics and Rocket Pro at Rocket Mortgage Canada from Windsor, Ontario. Rocket Pro is a lending team dedicated to helping broker grow. A graduate of the Lazaridis School of Business & Economics, Chris has brought an innovative and energetic demeanor as well as a passion for technology and data driven decision making to Rocket Mortgage Canada since 2020.
Chris is here to discuss: → Building your team and making sure you have the right "A" players, hiring slow and firing fast, and aligning the values of team members. → Building a values-driven organization, common values needed for business growth, the power of concise communication, and refining company culture. → Having the mindset of a Roman Emperor, applying stoic principles to life and business, and how leadership is something you do with your team, not to them.
Chris Colasanti's LinkedIn: @ChrisColasanti
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Thank you for listening to LendingThoughts, sponsored by Rocket Pro.
(00:03):
Today, I'm joined by ChrisColasanti, Vice President here at
Rocket Mortgage Canada.
one of our founding team members,
also a great friend.
And we're going to be having a
conversation that actually dives alittle bit outside of the typical
mortgage conversation today, but Ithink it was well worth it.
Chris and I touch on a lot ofphilosophical topics.
We talk about team building.
(00:24):
We talk about how to build the
organization that you want.
And mostly we talk about how to
make sure that you have the rightpeople inside of that organization
to achieve your ultimate mission.
You're not going to want to miss
this if you're out there buildingyour business.
business.
Have a listen today to Lending
Thoughts.
Thank you.
Today, I'm joined by ChrisColasanti.
Chris Colasanti is the VicePresident of Strategy and
(00:52):
Analytics and a member of ourmanagement team here at Rocket
Mortgage Canada.
Chris, thanks for joining today.
Thanks for having me.
This is my podcast debut.
Oh, beautiful.
And made even more fun by the fact
that instead of me doing the usualquestion asking all the way
through, which I do plan to askyou some questions as well, but
have a collaborative discussion.
But on this one, we're going to
(01:14):
actually switch it up and you'regoing to interview me.
You OK with that?Sounds good.
All right.
So we have a question that we
usually start with about lifestories, but I'm going to turn it
over to you.
We're going to get going and we'll
see how this goes.
Sure thing.
But Cam, you've got to ask thisquestion a couple of times.
So tell us your life story in 60seconds.
I never thought you'd ask so much.
ask so much.
So born and raised in DearbornHeights, Michigan.
(01:36):
Just on the other side of theborder from where we are today, as
we talk to you live from Windsor,Ontario, had two very hardworking
parents, two brothers and asister, very busy, eventful
household.
My mother worked in the automotive
industry and my father owned alandscaping company from the time
I was pretty young.
I started working for my dad when
I was 11 years old.
In many ways, just, you know, on
(01:58):
the ground floor, working outside,doing landscaping, shaped a big
part of who I am.
Today, met a girl from Windsor in
2006, started working for acompany named Quicken Loans.
I've heard of it.
Yeah, yeah.
A couple of people have now.
And in 2012, started out as a
mortgage associate, mortgagebanker, director of mortgage
banking, grew my way through thedirect consumer channel in that
(02:19):
business.
And then was part of a lucky group
that started what's now known asRocket Pro TPO.
And in 2014, I moved to Canada.
where i started a family now i
have two amazing children as welland in 2019 was part of a small
little discussion that eventuallyturned into the idea concept and
the business that became known asedison financial now known as
(02:42):
rocket mortgage canada today sothat's me in a nutshell all right
I was probably just a touch over60 seconds, but not bad.
I'd be remiss if I didn't ask,Bacem, for those of you that are
listening, Bacem is wearing aRocket Pro shirt.
It has the hashtag BitMiffle or B-I -T -M -F -L.
(03:03):
I've got to ask, what isBitMiffle?
Well, Chris, as you are alsositting here next to me wearing a
shirt that says Eat SleepBitMiffle, repeat, BitMiffle means
bring in the mother effing loans.
It is very provocative.
But what that is, it's an internalsaying with our team.
We're sort of, you know, jokingaround, being lighthearted with
the idea of our job is to bring inrevenue for this organization.
(03:26):
The way that we bring in revenueis we bring in mortgages and we
ultimately help clients when we dothat.
But bringing in mortgages solves alot of problems for a lot of
people, people, helps build thisbusiness.
And you touched on team and it's apiece of our culture, this sort of
bit miffle as, you know, oftenthings like sayings or stories or
(03:47):
traditions, you know, really helpform a culture and a team.
You've built several teams in yourcareer, both, you know, Rocket Pro
in the U S., Rocket Mortgage Canada, Edison
Financial as we started.
And then again, Rocket Pro in
Canada.
So why don't you lend us your
unfiltered thoughts on building ateam?
I appreciate that question.
I could probably go on for hours
(04:07):
just talking about this because ittruly is my life's work.
It's the way that I like to attackthe world every single day is
through the mindset of how do webuild teams?
How do we build humans?In so doing, how do we build
ourselves?And I think the most important
thing is to start with the whoover the what or the how.
(04:27):
And I think most people actuallystart with the idea first and
don't actually give enough thoughtto the team.
I have a lot of different waysthat I think about this and we can
wrap on for a little while, but Ithink the best summarization I've
ever heard is a quote from arestaurateur, an entrepreneur
named Danny Meyer.
And he says, your culture is the
(04:48):
sum of the behaviors that youcelebrate minus the behaviors that
you tolerate.
And I felt like I spent so much of
my life trying to capture thisinto a single quote or saying.
And to me, what that really meansis have fun with the things and
celebrate the things that you wantto see happen.
And don't be shy, be kind, butdon't be nice about the things
that you're unwilling to acceptculturally.
And sometimes it means thateverybody in the world doesn't get
(05:11):
the opportunity to work with you.
And you have to be okay with that.
You have to know what you standfor.
You have to be honest withyourself.
And you ultimately have to build ateam and a culture that aligns a
mission to a certain group ofpeople, starting with that who.
And it's amazing if you start withthe right who, how you can go and
(05:35):
pick any what, essentially.
Dan Gilbert, our co -founder,
chairman of Rocket, RocketHoldings, and everything that we
have to be so grateful for today.
He started this business with his
brother and a couple of otherpartners.
And I still think about the teamthat Dan built, the culture that
Dan built, the society that Danbuilt.
Like that is still very muchingrained in the organization that
we have.
(05:55):
And in many ways, a lot of what we
do, a lot of what I've done isreally build off the back of an
original mission, an originalculture.
And Dan used to say like, we couldgo sell shoes and it wouldn't
matter.
Like our culture.
stands the test, whether we'reselling shoes, vacuum cleaners, or
mortgages.
And it's so true because now you
(06:16):
look at a company in our rocketportfolio like StockX, for
example, and StockX does justthat.
They sell shoes on the internetand they've gone on to sell a
whole bunch of other things.
But at the core of everything that
we do is culture, it's teams, it'speople.
And I like to start by thinking ofthe people first and I let the
business sort of solve for itselfafter that.
(06:37):
And I think there's a quote, aquote, which is that like, you
don't build a business, you buildpeople or a team and the team
builds the business.
And so one thing I want to tug on
is, you know, a bit of like acontroversial topic as I do.
How do you think about diversityin the early stages of building a
team?And I'm not talking about
(06:58):
diversity in terms of genderdiversity or racial diversity.
I'm really talking about likediversity of thought.
How do you think about that in theearly stages of forming a team?
That's a great question.
I think that the best way to start
a company is with people who agreewith you in about 80 % of what
your beliefs are and really to tryto align those values.
that the best way to start acompany is with people who agree
with you in about 80 % of whatyour beliefs are and really to try
(07:19):
to align those values.
Most importantly, values about how
things get done.
So I'll give you an example.
If you're the type of person,you're the founder of a company or
co -founder, whatever it is, andyou're like, you're putting
together a team and you're thetype of person who wants to get
things done fast and fast is inyour DNA and you believe in, you
(07:40):
know, fast execution.
test, iterate, improve, launch and
learn.
And your co -founder or other
members of your team, or, youknow, the, I like to move slowly
so that I can make, you know,really, really good decisions, a
higher percentage of the time typefolks.
There's nothing wrong with either.
And both can be extremely
successful in any space.
But imagine in the early days when
you're literally hair on fire,there's a million things going on.
actually hundreds of decisions tobe made on a daily basis, and
you're not culturally aligned asto how work gets done.
One person's trying to move fast,the other person's trying to move
slow.
I can tell you it's not going to
(08:04):
be very long before those twothings start to press against one
another.
So when you talk about diversity,
yes, be open to everything,socioeconomic backgrounds, gender,
race, etc. Don't care.
Flush that stuff aside.
Work with the best people.
You want to work with the smartest
people, period.
Whatever that looks like, doesn't
matter.
Most important thing is, and I've
thought about this a lot, like ifI were starting another business
(08:27):
today, the first thing that Iwould do is I would actually write
down what the company stands for,what I stand for.
And I would probably interviewsolely based on those values.
I wouldn't even want to see yourresume.
I want to know who you are beforeI find out what you are.
I like to think about this in alittle test that I call the
building manager test.
(08:47):
And most people that I associate
with in the day -to -day, they'venever actually managed a building
before and thought about it like abusiness.
But let's just say the apartmentcomplex across the street, Chris,
for example, you might not knowanything about construction.
You might not know anything aboutbuilding maintenance, but I would
trust you with my whole heart togo and manage an apartment complex
for me.
Why?
(09:07):
Because I know that you believein... moving fast.
I know that you believe inbringing in the right people in
and around you.
I know that you quickly identify
your strengths and you want tofill your gaps as fast as
possible.
I know that you have a mindset for
solving things with technology andimplementing efficiencies right
out of the gate.
All those things hold true,
whether you're running Amazon, amortgage business or an apartment
(09:28):
complex.
So I actually don't.
care as much about the what, I docare about the who.
And then I move on to the core setof values.
And from there, I think you startto build a good team.
And I'm going to actually throwthis one back at you, if you don't
mind.
You started with me and the team
basically right after launchingEdison Financial four and a half
years ago.
What were some of your early first
(09:49):
impressions of the organization?And you've taken some of them.
And you've made them your own, butalso at the same time, many of
them were just beliefs and valuesthat you held deeply.
So what were some of those valuesthat you think you held coming in
and how are those values evolvingas time goes along?
time goes along?So when I started with Rocket or
(10:10):
what was Edison five years ago, Iwas very early on in my career.
I've learned a ton in the lastfive years.
I think my philosophies haveevolved, but there's certain core
things.
that I think have remained that if
I were building a team that Iwould look for, a couple of them
you mentioned, but you have tomake sure that the people that you
surround yourself with arephilosophically aligned.
If there's no philosophicalalignment, or at least the
(10:31):
majority of your philosophies arealigned, your business will just
stall out.
You'll never build anything.
You'll never get off the ground.
You'll spend the majority of your
time arguing.
And you just won't get anything
done.
So you need people with a bias
towards action.
You need people with a bias
towards speed.
And you need people that are not
afraid to make a bunch ofmistakes.
People grossly overestimate howmuch a mistake will cost them.
(10:53):
That's typical human behavior isyou tend to, you know, over index
towards like protecting yourlosses versus, you know.
trying to over -index towards yourgains.
And what I mean by that, forexample, is if you were to lose
$10, losing $10 feels much worsethan happiness you would gain if
you found $10.
Lost aversion.
Lost aversion is such a basichuman trait.
And many times...
The people that have this aversion
(11:16):
to loss, it's been shaped by theirbackgrounds, right?
So in your example, your familybusiness, I think there was like
some troubles when you sort of gofrom a successful business to a
not successful business and yousort of experience loss, it makes
you realize that it's not thatbad.
You just bet on yourself and thenyou just keep double down and
betting on yourself.
It allows you to move faster, take
(11:39):
more chances because you're not asafraid of the losses as you once
were.
And so I think it's really
important to find people that havethose things that I mentioned,
like a bias for action, a bias forspeed.
They're not afraid to makemistakes.
There's such, you know, basicthings.
I think most people would say thatthose are what you should look
(12:02):
for.
In practice, I don't always
observe it happening though.
To move us forward, I think we
both have sort of thesephilosophical views and A lot of
those philosophical views, they'reshaped by philosophies of other
founders.
You're an avid reader.
But I'm also curious, how doesphilosophy, and I mean that in the
(12:23):
traditional sense, how doesphilosophy play a role or how has
it played a role in your career?Yeah, I was a bit of a weird
child.
a bit of a weird child.
So I started reading Stoicphilosophy from the time I was
young.
And I've read a lot of different
philosophies for whatever reason.
The school of the Stoics is the
one that spoke to me the most.
(12:44):
why it resonated was because I was
a pretty high anxiety kid.
And it's like not something that I
realized at the time.
I thought it was pretty normal.
But as I got older, I reflected alot more on, you know, who I was
as a child.
And, you know, you mentioned the
fact that, like, you can gothrough these business journeys.
And I do know what it's like tobuild a successful business.
I know what it's like when allthat goes by the wayside and you
(13:08):
seriously question, like, am Igoing to die?
And I know that's like a strongword and thought to have.
And then you go and you likerebuild the business.
And then kind of like thatquestion that you have to ask
yourself, like, but did we die?And the answer is like, no, you
start to learn that you canpersevere and you can survive
these things.
So I was always searching for
(13:29):
like, what's driving this, thisanxiety, this inability to sit
still, to want to go out.
to accomplish something and to
build something.
And it was driven into me for sure
as a child, not by anything thatmy parents said.
I mean, my dad specifically wasvery entrepreneurial and always
wanted to run his own business.
And my dad is no wordsmith by any
(13:49):
means.
English is a second language, but
I watched it through his actions.
And I finally started to be able
to put... names to the feelingsthat I was having when I started
reading stoic philosophy andreally getting into that school,
specifically Marcus Aurelius, alot of work from Seneca.
And it was 2000 years old.
And they were talking about a lot
of the same concepts that wewrestle with today.
And really the core of stoicism iscontrolling yourself.
(14:11):
And focusing on yourself first andcontrolling your own mindset.
And you're talking about a timeroughly 2000 years ago when there
was disease and famine andconstant war and constant takeover
attempts.
And you had an individual like
Marcus Aurelius, who's the emperorof Rome.
who's effectively the mostpowerful regime in the world.
I mean, even more powerful than,let's say, an American president
would be today.
Like that level of control, they
(14:31):
can point their army in anydirection that they want.
They can take over any land thatthey want.
And this guy is journaling tohimself in his room at night,
talking about constraint.
talking about treating people with
fairness and kindness, talkingabout the right way to control his
own emotions in the day to day.
So not to let it get the best of
(14:53):
him and to be able to wake up thenext morning and go out and have
an amazing day.
And if you were to really
understand that trials andtribulations that he was going
through, he was not preaching.
He was talking to himself.
It wasn't until later that thosejournals actually became public.
But this was a man who was saying,like, take it one day at a time.
(15:20):
Do not suffer more than isnecessary in advance of what's to
come.
And I think about that constantly
because that is basically life.
That is basically life.
Some people have more privilegethan others.
We all start out from differentbackgrounds, socioeconomic means,
different social circles.
And then you become an adult and
(15:41):
suddenly you've got to find yourway in the world and you've got to
go out and make the best of it.
Or you can fold.
You can be a victim and you cansay that my starting place is
worse than others.
Therefore, my ending place is
going to be worse than others.
And I think the same thing can be
said about a business.
(16:02):
It turns and twists so much and so
fast and no business plan everstarts the way that.
It should, right?You go back to the early days of
what we were doing.
And, you know, when you first
joined us and the team, like thinkabout the original vision of where
we thought we would be four orfive years later.
You know, you think you're goingto be like on an actual rocket
ship to the moon.
But in that is COVID and two crazy
(16:25):
years that you never even thoughtin a million years where no
financial model could you haveimagined that the world was just
going to shut down.
Then.
If you were to know that, evenlooking back in hindsight, you
would say that would be a terriblething for business.
Well, actually, it was a reallygood thing for digital mortgage
companies.
Terrible thing for society and the
(16:46):
world.
But everybody started doing things
online.
And 2020, 2021, the first half of
2022 were the hottest real estatemarkets basically ever.
Back half of 22 to 23 and maybejust to the start of 2024 were
pretty terrible markets.
And then we started to get some
turnaround and things startedlooking better.
But if you weren't able to controlyour mindset through that journey,
think about how high the highswould have been and how low the
lows would have been.
(17:06):
So you probably remember me
preaching like cherish thisjourney.
throughout the entire process.
Because when you look back on this
someday, it is a period of yourlife.
You will not remember the finishline, but you will remember the
journey and you will remember thepeople that you worked with and
the relationships that you hadalong the way.
And often I think about you when Ithink about that.
I think about the team, but I'mgoing to throw it back at you.
(17:27):
You're an individual who thinks alot about culture and philosophy
and you are an avid readeryourself as well.
What has philosophy done for you?done for you?
Similar, you know, to yourself, Ithink Ryan Holiday has done an
amazing job bringing stoicphilosophy to the masses.
It probably was something that waslike sort of buried and no one
looked at.
And then Ryan Holiday one day sort
of like dug it up.
He's quite prolific.
He starts putting out all thesebooks.
(17:49):
And so you get your hands on, youknow, a book like The Obstacle is
the Way.
He's applying philosophy to these
different.
sort of more modern day examples.
You know, there's an example oflike Thomas Edison, our namesake
when we were Edison Financial.
And he talks about how the way
that Thomas Edison lived his lifewas a very stoic approach to
(18:10):
living.
And so you realize that you can
take these principles and thesephilosophies and apply them to
your own life in both life and inbusiness.
And, you know, one of our co-founders, Chad, used to always
say, there's no such thing as worklife.
They're just life.
I always encourage people on my
team to have these philosophiesand have these values.
And for the most part, they shouldbe across both business and life,
(18:32):
that you shouldn't have these twodifferent sort of philosophies.
Because as you know, like how youdo anything is how you do
everything.
You know, as I was going through
my career when I started, I mean,I read a lot of stoic philosophy,
but continue to read biographiesof founders and sort of develop my
own.
personal philosophy that's like
sort of being constantly refined.
And I encourage everyone to like
(18:53):
write them down.
You're going through some of your
philosophies on your phone.
You should be writing down a list
of, you know, whatever it may be,maybe five or 10 or 20 different
sort of like values that you liveby.
And for me, it's quotes.
Like I'm drawn to quotes.
Yeah.
Aphorisms.
I love aphorisms.
Like the more pithy, the better.
It's so amazing that you can takethese.
highly complex thoughts anddistill them down into like a few
(19:16):
words.
I try to read through and see how
these people have lived theirlives, specifically in biographies
or stories about philosophers anddistill that into my own values.
And then I take that and that'show I operate.
It's my system for operation, muchlike a company, a set of isms, you
know, like we have in our culture.
I sort of have my own set of
values that I live by and I'mconstantly refining.
(19:37):
It makes it much easier to makedecisions if you have a set of
principles that you're operatingon.
And it has done a tremendousamount for me to familiarize
myself with both like sort ofbusiness philosophy, but also
ancient philosophy, specificallyStoic philosophy.
I highly encourage, you know,everyone to sort of like dive into
it.
And like I said, Ryan Holiday is
probably the most approachable.
Nassim Taleb is another one that I
(19:57):
know you also like.
He's a bit much, you know, he's
very arrogant.
But high conviction is how I would
describe it.
Very high conviction.
People would probably see it asarrogance.
It probably is.
It's not for everyone.
But it's amazing to go through andread some of his aphorisms because
it just, it helps you think aboutthe world differently.
And if we all saw the world, youknow, the same sort of... narrow
(20:17):
way wouldn't really be able todisrupt or build a unique and
different company.
Yeah.
You talk about the power ofaphorisms and quotes, and I agree
with you wholeheartedly on that.
If somebody can take what would be
a thousand page book and condenseit to a single sentence or a
single aphorism, to me, that isnot getting off easy.
That is a tremendous skill.
There's a saying from Mark Twain,
(20:39):
I've heard it accredited to otherfolks in the past, but the one I
know is from Mark Twain.
I'm sorry I wrote you a long
letter.
I didn't have time to write a
short one, something to thateffect.
I think there's something to besaid for that.
There's something to be said for,I could have taken four hours to
present to you and I would havebeen able to present a really good
condensed thought into somethingyou could take away in mere
(21:00):
minutes, but I didn't prepare.
And I didn't actually go super
deep on this topic.
I didn't think about the way that
I build a team.
I didn't think about the way that
I build a company.
Instead, we're all sort of like
learning it as it goes along.
Many ways, wasting time, which is
why I think there is value inlearning and having done things
(21:22):
before, having built companiesbefore.
It's like, you know, the startingplace.
You'd ask me about building ateam, building company culture.
My starting place, once I'mthinking through the who, I sit
down and I actually write down thevalues.
My very next exercise, sometimeswe'll call them commandments or
core philosophies or at Rocket, wecall them isms.
But I will actually have a set ofthose for the company and then for
(21:42):
the team and what we're trying todo.
And the first thing I'll do isI'll actually get down with the
team and actually make it a fullexercise with the group and just
ask them, what do we believe in?What do we want to stand for?
And I find that asking others fortheir thoughts, right?
Lending their thoughts, if youwill, pun intended on that,
(22:04):
they'll start to believe in thatstuff and say like, you know, I
want to believe in X, Y, and Z.
And that's the way I think we
should operate.
Love that.
Let's write that down.
Let's get it on the board.
Let's scribe it.
And let's make it part of what we
want to live every single day.
And if I'm ever not living that or
if someone else on our team isn'tliving that and...
We identify that as somethingthat's important to us.
(22:27):
We're going to call that out.
By the way, since we're on the
topic, let's make not acceptingthings that we don't believe in,
that we see part of our culture.
You guys game with that?
Yes.
Okay.
Put that on the scribe.
That's going to be part of who we
are.
And we come to these agreements.
And once we come to theseagreements, we get them down on
paper.
That just becomes our operating
(22:48):
model in the day to day.
we revisit those.
We revisit those every six, 12months and say, is this still who
we are?Is this still what we believe in?
And having the ability to adjustthem through time, I think is
important too.
You know, it's the reason why even
in scripture, there are newtestaments, right?
(23:09):
Is sometimes you go back and youlook at these things and you go,
ah, you know, society has changed.
The reason why there are
amendments to the constitution, ifyou will, or to bills and you go
out and you just.
build your culture and culture is
a living and breathing thing andphilosophy and values are living,
breathing things.
And it's something that I really
give a lot of thought to as I walkevery day and every night.
(23:30):
And when I do, oftentimes I'mthinking about business problems,
but I'm also just thinking aboutculture values.
Yeah.
To save Mark Twain here, I think
it was, I didn't have time.
to write you a short letter.
So I wrote you a long one.
So good.
You know, you were talking aboutthe ability to like distill those
companies sort of philosophies andthose complex thoughts into these
pithy sayings.
And in many ways, you know,
(23:51):
Twitter was great for that or Xwhere people like they were
forced.
to express things in a character
limit.
Oh, I missed the character limit.
And is there no character limitanymore?
No. You can write as long of atweet as you want.
write as long of a tweet as youwant.
Maybe there's some characterlimit.
I have to assume there's like somemaximum, but it's, I mean,
there's, you can go on X today.
There's just novels.
I think that's what made X orTwitter so effective.
(24:13):
It's just like, you know, you haveall these people.
providing their thoughts in themost concise manner possible.
Same thing with news, right?Like it's a much better way to
consume information.
And it forced you to think about
how am I going to say this in sucha concise way?
In many ways, company emailsshould also have character limits.
I think we've had, you know,sometimes I go through my email
and I'm like, I'm not readingthis.
(24:34):
You sort of start to understand.
Thank God for AI.
Yeah.
Anyone writing an email that you
have to scroll should really popthat into AI and ask it to be more
concise.
But there is a real skill there.
And I think your company would bemuch better for it.
Everyone is condensing their ownthoughts.
So we talked a lot about team.
We talked a lot about.
(24:55):
culture and company philosophy,what are some actual takeaways you
have for anyone trying to build ateam?
Maybe it's a mortgage brokerthat's looking to go out on their
own and build a team around them,or someone that's looking to start
a business in the mortgage orlending space.
What advice would you give to themabout building their team?
I believe that, to pull in anaphorism here, pull in an aphorism
here, a team takes on the identityof its leader.
(25:16):
You've probably heard me say thatthousands of times in our years of
working together now.
We look the same.
A team takes on the identity ofits leader.
And what that means is that peopledon't actually care what you say.
They watch what you do.
And your team will slowly become
that over time.
If you show up late, you cannot
expect your team to show up ontime every day.
If you are somebody who does notrespond to emails on weekends.
(25:39):
For anything, you cannot expectyour team to respond to emails on
weekends.
Your team will not care what you
say.
They will watch what you do.
Leadership is not something thatyou do to your team.
It is something that you do withyour team, to quote the late,
great Steven Luigi Piazza, aformer colleague of mine.
People will watch what you do.
So when I think about building a
(26:01):
team, the biggest takeaway isthink about who you are first.
Write down the values.
And like actually be honest with
yourself.
Like don't say that I'm somebody
who believes in X, Y and all theseother things.
If that's not actually what youlive every single day, because
your team will sniff that out sofast.
People are smart.
People can feel things.
They're intuitive.
And if you're out there trying to
(26:21):
portray that you are somebodyyou're not.
then your team will pick that up.
Like, I think people make the
mistake, for instance, of tryingto be Steve Jobs after reading a
Jobs biography, for example.
And they'll be like, I'm going to
have an insanely high talent bar.
I'm going to have an insanely high
level of density for design, forexample.
But if you don't have a great eyefor design and you are willing to
let things pass without goingthrough a very, very rigorous
(26:43):
design process.
You cannot and you will not be
Steve Jobs.
Well, first of all, the odds of
being Steve Jobs are quite low tobegin with.
But truthfully, everyone has theirown Steve Jobs thing that they as
an individual human being, Ibelieve this, can be uniquely
phenomenal at and be the best inthe world at.
Try to identify what that is.
Write down what that is.
Write down what those values are.
(27:04):
Think about who you know or who
you can find that may embody thosevalues as well.
Describe those values and thenlive those values.
every single day.
And if you see yourself getting
off those values, creating aculture that allows your team to
tell you that you are fading onthose values or having a culture
that allows you to tell anybody onyour team.
(27:24):
that they're not living up tothose values in a very honest way,
in a very kind way, as I like tosay, without feelings being hurt.
That to me is how you build astrong team.
It's how you build a strongculture.
It's how you build a strongcompany because all companies at
the end of the day is a group ofindividuals who come together for
a common mission.
And if you can work together and
(27:46):
you can work together well enough,I truly believe that human beings
in a group working hard.
can solve almost all of society's
problems.
And if you can't do it today, then
just give it time and keep workingat it.
And you will soon enough figure itout.
But as we've done many times here,I'm going to throw this one back
(28:07):
at you.
I've talked a lot about philosophy
and culture.
I've told you some of my beliefs,
which we share.
You say they're contrarian, but we
agree.
So we agree on the 80%.
I'm going to ask you a question.
Is there a 20 % of maybe my
beliefs or anything that I've saidthat you disagree with?
Chris?I don't know if anything that
(28:27):
you've said thus far I disagreedwith.
One thing I want to add, however,is I've talked a lot about being
fast.
And one area I think you should be
slow in is in your hiring.
There's a saying which is hire
slow, fire fast.
And one thing that I've personally
observed is how detrimental itcould be to let B and C players
into your organization, especiallyearly on.
When you're early on, you have theability to have an incredibly high
(28:49):
talent density.
You should only have A players for
a while.
You know, I don't know what the
number is, but let's say at leastyour first 50 people should all be
A players.
And Steve Jobs talks about like.
Pixar was one of the greatestplaces he worked because they
somehow found a way to get 700 Aplayers in a room.
And that was really the magic ofPixar was just this insanely high
(29:13):
talent density.
And so when you identify someone
on your team that is not livingthese philosophies and it's become
apparent.
You can't move fast enough.
You have to get that person offthe bus.
Any thought that you could savethese people.
And, you know, again, this is acontroversial opinion that I have,
which is that I don't think isworthwhile trying to turn B
players into A players.
(29:33):
I think your time is better suited
finding.
A players.
So slowing down, making sure thatyou're making the right hires.
And then if you do miss hire,which is inevitably going to
happen, you have to get thosepeople off the bus as fast as you
humanly can.
There's a great saying, which is
when there's doubt, there's nodoubt.
If you have any doubt in thisperson, you probably should just
(29:54):
pull the trigger because your bestpeople, you never have doubt.
You never doubt those like fewpeople that are on your team.
Like there's no question in yourmind.
you would get rid of them or thatyou know if they would ever leave
you do everything you could tosave them if that's not the case
for someone they're probably notmaybe worthwhile keeping
especially if you're early on nowinevitably your business grows
it's a reality as you scale butyou should try to have the highest
(30:17):
talent densities you can for aslong as you possibly can.
I think that's really well said.
What I've often found is like
those people, they may be playersin your organization or C players
in your organization, but you takethat same skill set, you apply it
to another company, there areeight players there.
That's right.
And over the years, I have built
teams and torn teams down andbuilt and rebuilt.
(30:40):
And what I found is most of thepeople that I was really candid
with and really honest, And toldthem that, you know, I didn't
think it was working out.
Well, first of all, we had a
culture that most of them wouldjust self -select and say, like,
this isn't for me.
When I run into those people
sometimes months or in some casesyears and years later, most of
(31:03):
them I have fantasticrelationships with.
They are extremely grateful.
They're doing so well.
They're thankful for the time thatthey spent at the company.
And they got.
why it just didn't work.
And we didn't hide from that.
I didn't run from that.
They didn't run from that.
We think we're doing the right
thing by protecting someone.
(31:24):
That's the nice thing to do.
The kind thing to do is to letpeople know where they stand,
never surprise someone in someperformance review, but rather to
give the feedback every day tosay, this work isn't up to my
standard or the standard of thisorganization.
I need you to get there and I needyou to get there fast.
Otherwise, I have to find somebodyelse who can help us get this done
(31:47):
because we're on a mission and Ineed somebody who's going to help
me get there.
And people will appreciate that.
And guess who's going toappreciate that more than anybody,
Chris?Your A players.
Your best people who are mostbought in, whose exact skill set
aligns to the work being done.
Those are the people that if you
don't... hold an extremely highstandard in your culture and in
your organization, it's not longbefore those people become
disincentivized, disenchanted withwhat's going on, and they start to
(32:09):
self -select themselves out.
And if you're losing your A
players, you're in trouble.
You're in trouble.
So this has been a greatconversation.
Great.
We talk a lot about mortgages.
I don't know that we said the wordmortgage.
Until just now, I think I saidrocket mortgage a couple of times.
OK, right.
We didn't.
Good.
We didn't even get into mortgages
because we're running out of timehere.
But we talked a lot aboutphilosophy.
(32:30):
We talked a lot about culture andteam building.
And I think that when it comes tolending and mortgages and
brokering and.
technology and the real estate
space and all the things that weactually focus on day to day.
It's just as important to talkabout culture and philosophy and
who you are and what you want tobe, because that's ultimately
what's going to drive the successof your organization.
(32:51):
So thanks for interviewing me.
Thank you.
Thanks for the t -shirt.
Yeah.
Bringing them loans.
Much appreciated.
And we'll see you soon.
Cheers.
Thank you for listening to LendingThoughts, sponsored by Rocket Pro.
(00:03):
Today, I'm joined by ChrisColasanti, Vice President here at
Rocket Mortgage Canada.
one of our founding team members,
also a great friend.
And we're going to be having a
conversation that actually dives alittle bit outside of the typical
mortgage conversation today, but Ithink it was well worth it.
Chris and I touch on a lot ofphilosophical topics.
We talk about team building.
(00:24):
We talk about how to build the
organization that you want.
And mostly we talk about how to
make sure that you have the rightpeople inside of that organization
to achieve your ultimate mission.
You're not going to want to miss
this if you're out there buildingyour business.
business.
Have a listen today to Lending
Thoughts.
Thank you.
Today, I'm joined by ChrisColasanti.
Chris Colasanti is the VicePresident of Strategy and
(00:52):
Analytics and a member of ourmanagement team here at Rocket
Mortgage Canada.
Chris, thanks for joining today.
Thanks for having me.
This is my podcast debut.
Oh, beautiful.
And made even more fun by the fact
that instead of me doing the usualquestion asking all the way
through, which I do plan to askyou some questions as well, but
have a collaborative discussion.
But on this one, we're going to
(01:14):
actually switch it up and you'regoing to interview me.
You OK with that?Sounds good.
All right.
So we have a question that we
usually start with about lifestories, but I'm going to turn it
over to you.
We're going to get going and we'll
see how this goes.
Sure thing.
But Cam, you've got to ask thisquestion a couple of times.
So tell us your life story in 60seconds.
I never thought you'd ask so much.
ask so much.
So born and raised in DearbornHeights, Michigan.
(01:36):
Just on the other side of theborder from where we are today, as
we talk to you live from Windsor,Ontario, had two very hardworking
parents, two brothers and asister, very busy, eventful
household.
My mother worked in the automotive
industry and my father owned alandscaping company from the time
I was pretty young.
I started working for my dad when
I was 11 years old.
In many ways, just, you know, on
(01:58):
the ground floor, working outside,doing landscaping, shaped a big
part of who I am.
Today, met a girl from Windsor in
2006, started working for acompany named Quicken Loans.
I've heard of it.
Yeah, yeah.
A couple of people have now.
And in 2012, started out as a
mortgage associate, mortgagebanker, director of mortgage
banking, grew my way through thedirect consumer channel in that
(02:19):
business.
And then was part of a lucky group
that started what's now known asRocket Pro TPO.
And in 2014, I moved to Canada.
where i started a family now i
have two amazing children as welland in 2019 was part of a small
little discussion that eventuallyturned into the idea concept and
the business that became known asedison financial now known as
(02:42):
rocket mortgage canada today sothat's me in a nutshell all right
I was probably just a touch over60 seconds, but not bad.
I'd be remiss if I didn't ask,Bacem, for those of you that are
listening, Bacem is wearing aRocket Pro shirt.
It has the hashtag BitMiffle or B-I -T -M -F -L.
(03:03):
I've got to ask, what isBitMiffle?
Well, Chris, as you are alsositting here next to me wearing a
shirt that says Eat SleepBitMiffle, repeat, BitMiffle means
bring in the mother effing loans.
It is very provocative.
But what that is, it's an internalsaying with our team.
We're sort of, you know, jokingaround, being lighthearted with
the idea of our job is to bring inrevenue for this organization.
(03:26):
The way that we bring in revenueis we bring in mortgages and we
ultimately help clients when we dothat.
But bringing in mortgages solves alot of problems for a lot of
people, people, helps build thisbusiness.
And you touched on team and it's apiece of our culture, this sort of
bit miffle as, you know, oftenthings like sayings or stories or
(03:47):
traditions, you know, really helpform a culture and a team.
You've built several teams in yourcareer, both, you know, Rocket Pro
in the U S., Rocket Mortgage Canada, Edison
Financial as we started.
And then again, Rocket Pro in
Canada.
So why don't you lend us your
unfiltered thoughts on building ateam?
I appreciate that question.
I could probably go on for hours
(04:07):
just talking about this because ittruly is my life's work.
It's the way that I like to attackthe world every single day is
through the mindset of how do webuild teams?
How do we build humans?In so doing, how do we build
ourselves?And I think the most important
thing is to start with the whoover the what or the how.
(04:27):
And I think most people actuallystart with the idea first and
don't actually give enough thoughtto the team.
I have a lot of different waysthat I think about this and we can
wrap on for a little while, but Ithink the best summarization I've
ever heard is a quote from arestaurateur, an entrepreneur
named Danny Meyer.
And he says, your culture is the
(04:48):
sum of the behaviors that youcelebrate minus the behaviors that
you tolerate.
And I felt like I spent so much of
my life trying to capture thisinto a single quote or saying.
And to me, what that really meansis have fun with the things and
celebrate the things that you wantto see happen.
And don't be shy, be kind, butdon't be nice about the things
that you're unwilling to acceptculturally.
And sometimes it means thateverybody in the world doesn't get
(05:11):
the opportunity to work with you.
And you have to be okay with that.
You have to know what you standfor.
You have to be honest withyourself.
And you ultimately have to build ateam and a culture that aligns a
mission to a certain group ofpeople, starting with that who.
And it's amazing if you start withthe right who, how you can go and
(05:35):
pick any what, essentially.
Dan Gilbert, our co -founder,
chairman of Rocket, RocketHoldings, and everything that we
have to be so grateful for today.
He started this business with his
brother and a couple of otherpartners.
And I still think about the teamthat Dan built, the culture that
Dan built, the society that Danbuilt.
Like that is still very muchingrained in the organization that
we have.
(05:55):
And in many ways, a lot of what we
do, a lot of what I've done isreally build off the back of an
original mission, an originalculture.
And Dan used to say like, we couldgo sell shoes and it wouldn't
matter.
Like our culture.
stands the test, whether we'reselling shoes, vacuum cleaners, or
mortgages.
And it's so true because now you
(06:16):
look at a company in our rocketportfolio like StockX, for
example, and StockX does justthat.
They sell shoes on the internetand they've gone on to sell a
whole bunch of other things.
But at the core of everything that
we do is culture, it's teams, it'speople.
And I like to start by thinking ofthe people first and I let the
business sort of solve for itselfafter that.
(06:37):
And I think there's a quote, aquote, which is that like, you
don't build a business, you buildpeople or a team and the team
builds the business.
And so one thing I want to tug on
is, you know, a bit of like acontroversial topic as I do.
How do you think about diversityin the early stages of building a
team?And I'm not talking about
(06:58):
diversity in terms of genderdiversity or racial diversity.
I'm really talking about likediversity of thought.
How do you think about that in theearly stages of forming a team?
That's a great question.
I think that the best way to start
a company is with people who agreewith you in about 80 % of what
your beliefs are and really to tryto align those values.
that the best way to start acompany is with people who agree
with you in about 80 % of whatyour beliefs are and really to try
(07:19):
to align those values.
Most importantly, values about how
things get done.
So I'll give you an example.
If you're the type of person,you're the founder of a company or
co -founder, whatever it is, andyou're like, you're putting
together a team and you're thetype of person who wants to get
things done fast and fast is inyour DNA and you believe in, you
(07:40):
know, fast execution.
test, iterate, improve, launch and
learn.
And your co -founder or other
members of your team, or, youknow, the, I like to move slowly
so that I can make, you know,really, really good decisions, a
higher percentage of the time typefolks.
There's nothing wrong with either.
And both can be extremely
successful in any space.
But imagine in the early days when
you're literally hair on fire,there's a million things going on.
actually hundreds of decisions tobe made on a daily basis, and
you're not culturally aligned asto how work gets done.
One person's trying to move fast,the other person's trying to move
slow.
I can tell you it's not going to
(08:04):
be very long before those twothings start to press against one
another.
So when you talk about diversity,
yes, be open to everything,socioeconomic backgrounds, gender,
race, etc. Don't care.
Flush that stuff aside.
Work with the best people.
You want to work with the smartest
people, period.
Whatever that looks like, doesn't
matter.
Most important thing is, and I've
thought about this a lot, like ifI were starting another business
(08:27):
today, the first thing that Iwould do is I would actually write
down what the company stands for,what I stand for.
And I would probably interviewsolely based on those values.
I wouldn't even want to see yourresume.
I want to know who you are beforeI find out what you are.
I like to think about this in alittle test that I call the
building manager test.
(08:47):
And most people that I associate
with in the day -to -day, they'venever actually managed a building
before and thought about it like abusiness.
But let's just say the apartmentcomplex across the street, Chris,
for example, you might not knowanything about construction.
You might not know anything aboutbuilding maintenance, but I would
trust you with my whole heart togo and manage an apartment complex
for me.
Why?
(09:07):
Because I know that you believein... moving fast.
I know that you believe inbringing in the right people in
and around you.
I know that you quickly identify
your strengths and you want tofill your gaps as fast as
possible.
I know that you have a mindset for
solving things with technology andimplementing efficiencies right
out of the gate.
All those things hold true,
whether you're running Amazon, amortgage business or an apartment
(09:28):
complex.
So I actually don't.
care as much about the what, I docare about the who.
And then I move on to the core setof values.
And from there, I think you startto build a good team.
And I'm going to actually throwthis one back at you, if you don't
mind.
You started with me and the team
basically right after launchingEdison Financial four and a half
years ago.
What were some of your early first
(09:49):
impressions of the organization?And you've taken some of them.
And you've made them your own, butalso at the same time, many of
them were just beliefs and valuesthat you held deeply.
So what were some of those valuesthat you think you held coming in
and how are those values evolvingas time goes along?
time goes along?So when I started with Rocket or
(10:10):
what was Edison five years ago, Iwas very early on in my career.
I've learned a ton in the lastfive years.
I think my philosophies haveevolved, but there's certain core
things.
that I think have remained that if
I were building a team that Iwould look for, a couple of them
you mentioned, but you have tomake sure that the people that you
surround yourself with arephilosophically aligned.
If there's no philosophicalalignment, or at least the
(10:31):
majority of your philosophies arealigned, your business will just
stall out.
You'll never build anything.
You'll never get off the ground.
You'll spend the majority of your
time arguing.
And you just won't get anything
done.
So you need people with a bias
towards action.
You need people with a bias
towards speed.
And you need people that are not
afraid to make a bunch ofmistakes.
People grossly overestimate howmuch a mistake will cost them.
(10:53):
That's typical human behavior isyou tend to, you know, over index
towards like protecting yourlosses versus, you know.
trying to over -index towards yourgains.
And what I mean by that, forexample, is if you were to lose
$10, losing $10 feels much worsethan happiness you would gain if
you found $10.
Lost aversion.
Lost aversion is such a basichuman trait.
And many times...
The people that have this aversion
(11:16):
to loss, it's been shaped by theirbackgrounds, right?
So in your example, your familybusiness, I think there was like
some troubles when you sort of gofrom a successful business to a
not successful business and yousort of experience loss, it makes
you realize that it's not thatbad.
You just bet on yourself and thenyou just keep double down and
betting on yourself.
It allows you to move faster, take
(11:39):
more chances because you're not asafraid of the losses as you once
were.
And so I think it's really
important to find people that havethose things that I mentioned,
like a bias for action, a bias forspeed.
They're not afraid to makemistakes.
There's such, you know, basicthings.
I think most people would say thatthose are what you should look
(12:02):
for.
In practice, I don't always
observe it happening though.
To move us forward, I think we
both have sort of thesephilosophical views and A lot of
those philosophical views, they'reshaped by philosophies of other
founders.
You're an avid reader.
But I'm also curious, how doesphilosophy, and I mean that in the
(12:23):
traditional sense, how doesphilosophy play a role or how has
it played a role in your career?Yeah, I was a bit of a weird
child.
a bit of a weird child.
So I started reading Stoicphilosophy from the time I was
young.
And I've read a lot of different
philosophies for whatever reason.
The school of the Stoics is the
one that spoke to me the most.
(12:44):
why it resonated was because I was
a pretty high anxiety kid.
And it's like not something that I
realized at the time.
I thought it was pretty normal.
But as I got older, I reflected alot more on, you know, who I was
as a child.
And, you know, you mentioned the
fact that, like, you can gothrough these business journeys.
And I do know what it's like tobuild a successful business.
I know what it's like when allthat goes by the wayside and you
(13:08):
seriously question, like, am Igoing to die?
And I know that's like a strongword and thought to have.
And then you go and you likerebuild the business.
And then kind of like thatquestion that you have to ask
yourself, like, but did we die?And the answer is like, no, you
start to learn that you canpersevere and you can survive
these things.
So I was always searching for
(13:29):
like, what's driving this, thisanxiety, this inability to sit
still, to want to go out.
to accomplish something and to
build something.
And it was driven into me for sure
as a child, not by anything thatmy parents said.
I mean, my dad specifically wasvery entrepreneurial and always
wanted to run his own business.
And my dad is no wordsmith by any
(13:49):
means.
English is a second language, but
I watched it through his actions.
And I finally started to be able
to put... names to the feelingsthat I was having when I started
reading stoic philosophy andreally getting into that school,
specifically Marcus Aurelius, alot of work from Seneca.
And it was 2000 years old.
And they were talking about a lot
of the same concepts that wewrestle with today.
And really the core of stoicism iscontrolling yourself.
(14:11):
And focusing on yourself first andcontrolling your own mindset.
And you're talking about a timeroughly 2000 years ago when there
was disease and famine andconstant war and constant takeover
attempts.
And you had an individual like
Marcus Aurelius, who's the emperorof Rome.
who's effectively the mostpowerful regime in the world.
I mean, even more powerful than,let's say, an American president
would be today.
Like that level of control, they
(14:31):
can point their army in anydirection that they want.
They can take over any land thatthey want.
And this guy is journaling tohimself in his room at night,
talking about constraint.
talking about treating people with
fairness and kindness, talkingabout the right way to control his
own emotions in the day to day.
So not to let it get the best of
(14:53):
him and to be able to wake up thenext morning and go out and have
an amazing day.
And if you were to really
understand that trials andtribulations that he was going
through, he was not preaching.
He was talking to himself.
It wasn't until later that thosejournals actually became public.
But this was a man who was saying,like, take it one day at a time.
(15:20):
Do not suffer more than isnecessary in advance of what's to
come.
And I think about that constantly
because that is basically life.
That is basically life.
Some people have more privilegethan others.
We all start out from differentbackgrounds, socioeconomic means,
different social circles.
And then you become an adult and
(15:41):
suddenly you've got to find yourway in the world and you've got to
go out and make the best of it.
Or you can fold.
You can be a victim and you cansay that my starting place is
worse than others.
Therefore, my ending place is
going to be worse than others.
And I think the same thing can be
said about a business.
(16:02):
It turns and twists so much and so
fast and no business plan everstarts the way that.
It should, right?You go back to the early days of
what we were doing.
And, you know, when you first
joined us and the team, like thinkabout the original vision of where
we thought we would be four orfive years later.
You know, you think you're goingto be like on an actual rocket
ship to the moon.
But in that is COVID and two crazy
(16:25):
years that you never even thoughtin a million years where no
financial model could you haveimagined that the world was just
going to shut down.
Then.
If you were to know that, evenlooking back in hindsight, you
would say that would be a terriblething for business.
Well, actually, it was a reallygood thing for digital mortgage
companies.
Terrible thing for society and the
(16:46):
world.
But everybody started doing things
online.
And 2020, 2021, the first half of
2022 were the hottest real estatemarkets basically ever.
Back half of 22 to 23 and maybejust to the start of 2024 were
pretty terrible markets.
And then we started to get some
turnaround and things startedlooking better.
But if you weren't able to controlyour mindset through that journey,
think about how high the highswould have been and how low the
lows would have been.
(17:06):
So you probably remember me
preaching like cherish thisjourney.
throughout the entire process.
Because when you look back on this
someday, it is a period of yourlife.
You will not remember the finishline, but you will remember the
journey and you will remember thepeople that you worked with and
the relationships that you hadalong the way.
And often I think about you when Ithink about that.
I think about the team, but I'mgoing to throw it back at you.
(17:27):
You're an individual who thinks alot about culture and philosophy
and you are an avid readeryourself as well.
What has philosophy done for you?done for you?
Similar, you know, to yourself, Ithink Ryan Holiday has done an
amazing job bringing stoicphilosophy to the masses.
It probably was something that waslike sort of buried and no one
looked at.
And then Ryan Holiday one day sort
of like dug it up.
He's quite prolific.
He starts putting out all thesebooks.
(17:49):
And so you get your hands on, youknow, a book like The Obstacle is
the Way.
He's applying philosophy to these
different.
sort of more modern day examples.
You know, there's an example oflike Thomas Edison, our namesake
when we were Edison Financial.
And he talks about how the way
that Thomas Edison lived his lifewas a very stoic approach to
(18:10):
living.
And so you realize that you can
take these principles and thesephilosophies and apply them to
your own life in both life and inbusiness.
And, you know, one of our co-founders, Chad, used to always
say, there's no such thing as worklife.
They're just life.
I always encourage people on my
team to have these philosophiesand have these values.
And for the most part, they shouldbe across both business and life,
(18:32):
that you shouldn't have these twodifferent sort of philosophies.
Because as you know, like how youdo anything is how you do
everything.
You know, as I was going through
my career when I started, I mean,I read a lot of stoic philosophy,
but continue to read biographiesof founders and sort of develop my
own.
personal philosophy that's like
sort of being constantly refined.
And I encourage everyone to like
(18:53):
write them down.
You're going through some of your
philosophies on your phone.
You should be writing down a list
of, you know, whatever it may be,maybe five or 10 or 20 different
sort of like values that you liveby.
And for me, it's quotes.
Like I'm drawn to quotes.
Yeah.
Aphorisms.
I love aphorisms.
Like the more pithy, the better.
It's so amazing that you can takethese.
highly complex thoughts anddistill them down into like a few
(19:16):
words.
I try to read through and see how
these people have lived theirlives, specifically in biographies
or stories about philosophers anddistill that into my own values.
And then I take that and that'show I operate.
It's my system for operation, muchlike a company, a set of isms, you
know, like we have in our culture.
I sort of have my own set of
values that I live by and I'mconstantly refining.
(19:37):
It makes it much easier to makedecisions if you have a set of
principles that you're operatingon.
And it has done a tremendousamount for me to familiarize
myself with both like sort ofbusiness philosophy, but also
ancient philosophy, specificallyStoic philosophy.
I highly encourage, you know,everyone to sort of like dive into
it.
And like I said, Ryan Holiday is
probably the most approachable.
Nassim Taleb is another one that I
(19:57):
know you also like.
He's a bit much, you know, he's
very arrogant.
But high conviction is how I would
describe it.
Very high conviction.
People would probably see it asarrogance.
It probably is.
It's not for everyone.
But it's amazing to go through andread some of his aphorisms because
it just, it helps you think aboutthe world differently.
And if we all saw the world, youknow, the same sort of... narrow
(20:17):
way wouldn't really be able todisrupt or build a unique and
different company.
Yeah.
You talk about the power ofaphorisms and quotes, and I agree
with you wholeheartedly on that.
If somebody can take what would be
a thousand page book and condenseit to a single sentence or a
single aphorism, to me, that isnot getting off easy.
That is a tremendous skill.
There's a saying from Mark Twain,
(20:39):
I've heard it accredited to otherfolks in the past, but the one I
know is from Mark Twain.
I'm sorry I wrote you a long
letter.
I didn't have time to write a
short one, something to thateffect.
I think there's something to besaid for that.
There's something to be said for,I could have taken four hours to
present to you and I would havebeen able to present a really good
condensed thought into somethingyou could take away in mere
(21:00):
minutes, but I didn't prepare.
And I didn't actually go super
deep on this topic.
I didn't think about the way that
I build a team.
I didn't think about the way that
I build a company.
Instead, we're all sort of like
learning it as it goes along.
Many ways, wasting time, which is
why I think there is value inlearning and having done things
(21:22):
before, having built companiesbefore.
It's like, you know, the startingplace.
You'd ask me about building ateam, building company culture.
My starting place, once I'mthinking through the who, I sit
down and I actually write down thevalues.
My very next exercise, sometimeswe'll call them commandments or
core philosophies or at Rocket, wecall them isms.
But I will actually have a set ofthose for the company and then for
(21:42):
the team and what we're trying todo.
And the first thing I'll do isI'll actually get down with the
team and actually make it a fullexercise with the group and just
ask them, what do we believe in?What do we want to stand for?
And I find that asking others fortheir thoughts, right?
Lending their thoughts, if youwill, pun intended on that,
(22:04):
they'll start to believe in thatstuff and say like, you know, I
want to believe in X, Y, and Z.
And that's the way I think we
should operate.
Love that.
Let's write that down.
Let's get it on the board.
Let's scribe it.
And let's make it part of what we
want to live every single day.
And if I'm ever not living that or
if someone else on our team isn'tliving that and...
We identify that as somethingthat's important to us.
(22:27):
We're going to call that out.
By the way, since we're on the
topic, let's make not acceptingthings that we don't believe in,
that we see part of our culture.
You guys game with that?
Yes.
Okay.
Put that on the scribe.
That's going to be part of who we
are.
And we come to these agreements.
And once we come to theseagreements, we get them down on
paper.
That just becomes our operating
(22:48):
model in the day to day.
we revisit those.
We revisit those every six, 12months and say, is this still who
we are?Is this still what we believe in?
And having the ability to adjustthem through time, I think is
important too.
You know, it's the reason why even
in scripture, there are newtestaments, right?
(23:09):
Is sometimes you go back and youlook at these things and you go,
ah, you know, society has changed.
The reason why there are
amendments to the constitution, ifyou will, or to bills and you go
out and you just.
build your culture and culture is
a living and breathing thing andphilosophy and values are living,
breathing things.
And it's something that I really
give a lot of thought to as I walkevery day and every night.
(23:30):
And when I do, oftentimes I'mthinking about business problems,
but I'm also just thinking aboutculture values.
Yeah.
To save Mark Twain here, I think
it was, I didn't have time.
to write you a short letter.
So I wrote you a long one.
So good.
You know, you were talking aboutthe ability to like distill those
companies sort of philosophies andthose complex thoughts into these
pithy sayings.
And in many ways, you know,
(23:51):
Twitter was great for that or Xwhere people like they were
forced.
to express things in a character
limit.
Oh, I missed the character limit.
And is there no character limitanymore?
No. You can write as long of atweet as you want.
write as long of a tweet as youwant.
Maybe there's some characterlimit.
I have to assume there's like somemaximum, but it's, I mean,
there's, you can go on X today.
There's just novels.
I think that's what made X orTwitter so effective.
(24:13):
It's just like, you know, you haveall these people.
providing their thoughts in themost concise manner possible.
Same thing with news, right?Like it's a much better way to
consume information.
And it forced you to think about
how am I going to say this in sucha concise way?
In many ways, company emailsshould also have character limits.
I think we've had, you know,sometimes I go through my email
and I'm like, I'm not readingthis.
(24:34):
You sort of start to understand.
Thank God for AI.
Yeah.
Anyone writing an email that you
have to scroll should really popthat into AI and ask it to be more
concise.
But there is a real skill there.
And I think your company would bemuch better for it.
Everyone is condensing their ownthoughts.
So we talked a lot about team.
We talked a lot about.
(24:55):
culture and company philosophy,what are some actual takeaways you
have for anyone trying to build ateam?
Maybe it's a mortgage brokerthat's looking to go out on their
own and build a team around them,or someone that's looking to start
a business in the mortgage orlending space.
What advice would you give to themabout building their team?
I believe that, to pull in anaphorism here, pull in an aphorism
here, a team takes on the identityof its leader.
(25:16):
You've probably heard me say thatthousands of times in our years of
working together now.
We look the same.
A team takes on the identity ofits leader.
And what that means is that peopledon't actually care what you say.
They watch what you do.
And your team will slowly become
that over time.
If you show up late, you cannot
expect your team to show up ontime every day.
If you are somebody who does notrespond to emails on weekends.
(25:39):
For anything, you cannot expectyour team to respond to emails on
weekends.
Your team will not care what you
say.
They will watch what you do.
Leadership is not something thatyou do to your team.
It is something that you do withyour team, to quote the late,
great Steven Luigi Piazza, aformer colleague of mine.
People will watch what you do.
So when I think about building a
(26:01):
team, the biggest takeaway isthink about who you are first.
Write down the values.
And like actually be honest with
yourself.
Like don't say that I'm somebody
who believes in X, Y and all theseother things.
If that's not actually what youlive every single day, because
your team will sniff that out sofast.
People are smart.
People can feel things.
They're intuitive.
And if you're out there trying to
(26:21):
portray that you are somebodyyou're not.
then your team will pick that up.
Like, I think people make the
mistake, for instance, of tryingto be Steve Jobs after reading a
Jobs biography, for example.
And they'll be like, I'm going to
have an insanely high talent bar.
I'm going to have an insanely high
level of density for design, forexample.
But if you don't have a great eyefor design and you are willing to
let things pass without goingthrough a very, very rigorous
(26:43):
design process.
You cannot and you will not be
Steve Jobs.
Well, first of all, the odds of
being Steve Jobs are quite low tobegin with.
But truthfully, everyone has theirown Steve Jobs thing that they as
an individual human being, Ibelieve this, can be uniquely
phenomenal at and be the best inthe world at.
Try to identify what that is.
Write down what that is.
Write down what those values are.
(27:04):
Think about who you know or who
you can find that may embody thosevalues as well.
Describe those values and thenlive those values.
every single day.
And if you see yourself getting
off those values, creating aculture that allows your team to
tell you that you are fading onthose values or having a culture
that allows you to tell anybody onyour team.
(27:24):
that they're not living up tothose values in a very honest way,
in a very kind way, as I like tosay, without feelings being hurt.
That to me is how you build astrong team.
It's how you build a strongculture.
It's how you build a strongcompany because all companies at
the end of the day is a group ofindividuals who come together for
a common mission.
And if you can work together and
(27:46):
you can work together well enough,I truly believe that human beings
in a group working hard.
can solve almost all of society's
problems.
And if you can't do it today, then
just give it time and keep workingat it.
And you will soon enough figure itout.
But as we've done many times here,I'm going to throw this one back
(28:07):
at you.
I've talked a lot about philosophy
and culture.
I've told you some of my beliefs,
which we share.
You say they're contrarian, but we
agree.
So we agree on the 80%.
I'm going to ask you a question.
Is there a 20 % of maybe my
beliefs or anything that I've saidthat you disagree with?
Chris?I don't know if anything that
(28:27):
you've said thus far I disagreedwith.
One thing I want to add, however,is I've talked a lot about being
fast.
And one area I think you should be
slow in is in your hiring.
There's a saying which is hire
slow, fire fast.
And one thing that I've personally
observed is how detrimental itcould be to let B and C players
into your organization, especiallyearly on.
When you're early on, you have theability to have an incredibly high
(28:49):
talent density.
You should only have A players for
a while.
You know, I don't know what the
number is, but let's say at leastyour first 50 people should all be
A players.
And Steve Jobs talks about like.
Pixar was one of the greatestplaces he worked because they
somehow found a way to get 700 Aplayers in a room.
And that was really the magic ofPixar was just this insanely high
(29:13):
talent density.
And so when you identify someone
on your team that is not livingthese philosophies and it's become
apparent.
You can't move fast enough.
You have to get that person offthe bus.
Any thought that you could savethese people.
And, you know, again, this is acontroversial opinion that I have,
which is that I don't think isworthwhile trying to turn B
players into A players.
(29:33):
I think your time is better suited
finding.
A players.
So slowing down, making sure thatyou're making the right hires.
And then if you do miss hire,which is inevitably going to
happen, you have to get thosepeople off the bus as fast as you
humanly can.
There's a great saying, which is
when there's doubt, there's nodoubt.
If you have any doubt in thisperson, you probably should just
(29:54):
pull the trigger because your bestpeople, you never have doubt.
You never doubt those like fewpeople that are on your team.
Like there's no question in yourmind.
you would get rid of them or thatyou know if they would ever leave
you do everything you could tosave them if that's not the case
for someone they're probably notmaybe worthwhile keeping
especially if you're early on nowinevitably your business grows
it's a reality as you scale butyou should try to have the highest
(30:17):
talent densities you can for aslong as you possibly can.
I think that's really well said.
What I've often found is like
those people, they may be playersin your organization or C players
in your organization, but you takethat same skill set, you apply it
to another company, there areeight players there.
That's right.
And over the years, I have built
teams and torn teams down andbuilt and rebuilt.
(30:40):
And what I found is most of thepeople that I was really candid
with and really honest, And toldthem that, you know, I didn't
think it was working out.
Well, first of all, we had a
culture that most of them wouldjust self -select and say, like,
this isn't for me.
When I run into those people
sometimes months or in some casesyears and years later, most of
(31:03):
them I have fantasticrelationships with.
They are extremely grateful.
They're doing so well.
They're thankful for the time thatthey spent at the company.
And they got.
why it just didn't work.
And we didn't hide from that.
I didn't run from that.
They didn't run from that.
We think we're doing the right
thing by protecting someone.
(31:24):
That's the nice thing to do.
The kind thing to do is to letpeople know where they stand,
never surprise someone in someperformance review, but rather to
give the feedback every day tosay, this work isn't up to my
standard or the standard of thisorganization.
I need you to get there and I needyou to get there fast.
Otherwise, I have to find somebodyelse who can help us get this done
(31:47):
because we're on a mission and Ineed somebody who's going to help
me get there.
And people will appreciate that.
And guess who's going toappreciate that more than anybody,
Chris?Your A players.
Your best people who are mostbought in, whose exact skill set
aligns to the work being done.
Those are the people that if you
don't... hold an extremely highstandard in your culture and in
your organization, it's not longbefore those people become
disincentivized, disenchanted withwhat's going on, and they start to
(32:09):
self -select themselves out.
And if you're losing your A
players, you're in trouble.
You're in trouble.
So this has been a greatconversation.
Great.
We talk a lot about mortgages.
I don't know that we said the wordmortgage.
Until just now, I think I saidrocket mortgage a couple of times.
OK, right.
We didn't.
Good.
We didn't even get into mortgages
because we're running out of timehere.
But we talked a lot aboutphilosophy.
(32:30):
We talked a lot about culture andteam building.
And I think that when it comes tolending and mortgages and
brokering and.
technology and the real estate
space and all the things that weactually focus on day to day.
It's just as important to talkabout culture and philosophy and
who you are and what you want tobe, because that's ultimately
what's going to drive the successof your organization.
(32:51):
So thanks for interviewing me.
Thank you.
Thanks for the t -shirt.
Yeah.
Bringing them loans.
Much appreciated.
And we'll see you soon.
Cheers.
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