By Kathryn Fitzpatrick, Associate Editor, National Mortgage Professional

Ben Lavender doesn’t cold call anymore.

He used to, charming real estate agents with his slick British accent and posh manners, but these days, he doesn’t have to. The clients find him. Plus, he doesn’t think cold-calling projects the right image.

“It doesn’t exactly communicate, I’m amazing at what I do,” he says.

These days, Lavender, a team lead at Madison Mortgage in Lake Success, N.Y., goes to events. He schedules podcasts. He posts short videos to Facebook educating borrowers about things like PMI and LTV. “Nobody watches them,” he says. “But they keep my phone ringing.”

That’s the end goal, obviously. His job isn’t to be flashy — though his personal tagline as “New York’s Favorite British Mortgage Broker” might suggest otherwise. It’s to stay top of mind, which he does, relentlessly.

At 36 years old, Lavender runs a ten-person team and closes over 100 loans a year. He’s direct, self-aware, and strangely soft-spoken for a man who has essentially turned his personality into a prospecting machine. But he’s got no problem telling you how it happened.

From London To Long Island

Lavender’s Britishness, he’ll tell you, is more a marketing artifice than a personal identity. “I don’t honestly identify much with Britain anymore,” he says. “I love America.”

His family moved from London to Great Neck, Long Island, when he was 14. The relocation, he says, was largely prompted by antisemitism in the U.K. His mother, originally from Iran, had left her home country ahead of the revolution; when she began to sense similar patterns in England, they fled again.

In Great Neck, Lavender found suburban life jarring after the independence of London. “As a kid, I’d take a couple buses and a train to get to school,” he recalls. “To go from that to getting on the yellow school bus was just very different.”

Still, he liked high school well enough. He ran track, a discipline he credits for much of his later work ethic. “Sprint training is absolutely grueling,” he says. “The lactic acid buildup in your quads — it just sharpens your brain.” Lavender also practiced martial arts from the time he was four. “That was part of the antisemitism shtick,” he says. “My dad was like, ‘You’re going to learn how to defend yourself.’”

The discipline stuck. The confidence? Maybe not.

“I Was An Extrovert With Social Anxiety”

Lavender is the first to admit he didn’t naturally take to mortgage sales. “Starting off, I was not very good,” he says. “I didn’t have bad people skills, but I was too much of a people pleaser and a little bit shy.”

He’d spend hours awake at night, every client conversation haunting him like something embarrassing from the 2nd grade. It seemed, early on, as if he simply wasn’t built for the kind of confident, quick-talking persona the industry liked to reward.

Despite the initial hurdle, though, Lavender self-identifies as a glutton for punishment, which kept him in the game. “I think there’s a part of me that just can take a lot of pain,” he says, referring to his athletic background.

He started working at Madison Mortgage Services about eleven years ago as a loan officer assistant (LOA) for Shah Tehrany, who today is the CEO. Early on, Lavender says, Tehrany set the foundation for his understanding of the business. “He taught me,” Lavender says, “and now he runs Madison. And now I run my own team. I try and download everything that I can into my team.”

Tehrany notes that Lavender perhaps exaggerates his early ineptitude for sales. “He just wasn’t as naturally inclined to communicate with others and certainly to present in front of others,” he says. “Ben was always smart. He just didn’t know anything about mortgages.”

But he taught Lavender what he knew. “I just gave him my sort of playbook,” Tehrany says. “How do you frame something to an agent or borrower so it actually makes sense? Mortgages are complex financial instruments, but people don’t care about mortgages — they want a house. You have to break it down in a way that not only explains the financing, but sets the expectations for the journey.”

The revelation that ultimately shifted Lavender’s career trajectory came a bit later. Something he had to figure out on his own: he realized “only three or four years ago” that he wasn’t actually introverted, as he’d long believed. “I was an extrovert with social anxiety,” he says. “And that’s the worst thing you can possibly have because it stops you from doing the one thing you want to do.”

Rather than retreat, he addressed the anxiety head-on. Lavender began listening to hours of sales audiobooks on his morning drives to work, basically “hypnotizing” himself as an immersion strategy he now credits with transforming his mindset. “It would put me in this more aggressive frame of mind,” he explains. “Not like, ‘sell me this pen’ aggression, but more like, lead the consumer where they need to go.”

“If you do something 50 times or 100 times, if you take Gladwell’s theory of 10,000 hours, right?” says Tehrany. “If you do it for 10,000 hours like you’re going to become a master of it. And that’s what Ben has done.”

Over time, Lavender honed a conversational style that relies less on flashy sales tactics and more on intentionality. He describes himself as a “counterpuncher” — a listener who lets the client speak first, then responds thoughtfully. “I listen to what the consumer is saying,” he explains. “And then not only do I try and address the aspects that they’re trying to communicate, but I’m also, in my communication back to them, anticipating their needs.”

He takes personal inspiration from Amazon’s philosophy. “We’re not Amazon,” he says, “but the Amazon and Bezos mindset is, if the customer calls to complain, you’ve already failed. You need to anticipate those needs before they happen.”

Through that process, Lavender anticipates client questions about rate locks or loan steps and proactively builds videos, email templates, and PDFs to answer them. “Some people like to absorb this information in different ways,” he says. “So we try and offer at least two options for each.” The goal is always the same — limit stress, provide clarity, and make the client feel they’re in capable hands from the outset.

“Do I Find Rates Interesting? Sure. But It’s Not My Passion.”

“I love this business,” Lavender says. “But it’s not because of the economy or rates. That stuff is interesting, but I don’t go to bed thinking, ‘What are rates going to do tomorrow?’ No one can predict that.”

What he does care about are the things he can control: process, training, execution. “Numbers don’t lie. But you have to be good at so many things,” he says. “Underwriting guidelines. Structuring files. Communication. Listening. Explaining. Marketing. Managing.”

He’s also fanatical about preapprovals. “We are known for having amazingly accurate preapprovals,” he says. “I have not had a file not close because of an income, asset, or credit error that I’ve made. Early in the business I did, because you’re a rookie. But I lost sleep. I just can’t have that happen again.”

> Ben Lavender turned a cold-calling career into a content-driven machine, using his British accent as a memorable hook. Today, he’s one of New York’s most consistent loan producers, closing over 100 deals a year without ever picking up the phone first.

Lavender’s aggressive attention to detail has become one of the defining strengths of his practice — and a key reason agents trust him. “It’s not only collecting all documentation,” he says. “It’s the history of the income. Because the history of the income is ultimately what determines the income calculation.” When loan officers skip that step, he explains, “they end up being ... screwed.” He makes sure his clients never are.

That rigor extends beyond files to the entire customer journey. “If I put myself out there and make myself accessible to people online, they feel way more at ease when they call me,” he says. “And I feel at ease because I don’t have to sell them.” The goal, always, is to reduce friction — to anticipate issues before they arise, and to create systems that are both scalable and human.

The British Mortgage Broker Brand

Ben Lavender, always one step ahead, knows what you’re thinking. Yes, he’s British. No, he’s not that into it, but yes, the accent helps.

“It kind of became that — ‘the British guy.’ And I think he liked it and understood it and realized … that’s kind of a good hook,” says Tehrany.

His videos — dozens of them — introduce him as “New York’s Favorite British Mortgage Broker.” And while they rarely crack a few hundred views, they do what he needs them to. “I can’t even get hundreds of thousands of views,” he shrugs. “It’s not my skill set. But that’s okay. The point is, when people look you up, they get to know you.”

Social media isn’t a performance, in Lavender’s view. Less a platform to parade around and show off, it’s proof of life. “Loan officers think they’re gonna go viral and get judged. But they’re not that special,” he says, with a smile that’s only half kidding. “They’re not athletes or singers or the Kardashians.”

He used to cold call. That was before. “With a British accent, even though I hated it, I was pretty damn good at it,” he admits.

Now he doesn’t call anyone. “On the average day, I make zero outbound phone calls,” he says, matter-of-fact. “It’s by design.”

His version of outbound is showing up. Regularly. And in person. He hosts two events a month, sometimes more, and rotates through a steady stream of podcast interviews with realtors, insurance brokers, home inspectors, anyone remotely adjacent to the real estate food chain. Podcasts like Loan Officer Wealth, and Smells Like Cat Pee, hosted by guys who look like they might’ve played mandolin in an indie folk band in the late aughts. This outreach helps both potential borrowers and real estate agents find him, not in a flood, maybe (it’s rare for mortgage content to generate a flood), but a steady stream.

The goal isn’t mass exposure, hundreds of thousands of views, a slot on a talk show. It’s a connection. “The events are to make a good first impression.”

He’s not precious about any of it, in spite of the clear effort it takes. “Most of my posts don’t do well,” he says. “But they result in more direct messages.”

This is how it works: a realtor texts him in a group chat with a client. The client already knows who he is — they’ve seen him explain PMI with whiteboard drawings, heard his voice, maybe even caught a joke or two. “They’re at ease,” he says. “And I’m at ease, because I don’t have to sell them.”

There is, beneath the confidence, a certain relief. Cold calling, he says, was efficient but soul-sucking. “The events are more draining,” he says, “but they’re more fun.”

That’s the thing with Lavender: he’s trying to be present. “It’s not about going viral,” he says. “It’s about being real enough that someone Googles you, watches your stuff, and decides, ‘Yeah, I’ll call that guy.’”

And if they don’t? No harm done. “We’re not rock stars,” he says. “We’re loan officers. Nobody is dissecting your every word.”

He pauses.

“Hopefully.”

Building The Machine

Lavender says his team is the machine behind the volume. He might be the face, but those behind the scenes are the gears grinding under the hood: quiet, precise, essential. He closed 102 loans last year, and averages between eight and fifteen a month, depending on the season. “I have a great team,” he says. “That’s the secret.”

He’s surrounded himself with people who, in his words, “thrive in structure.” Not everyone does. “It’s not a job just anyone can do,” he says. “But some of them genuinely enjoy problem-solving and creating these intricate structures. They actually like it.”

There’s a guy who handles pipeline management — lock strategy, condition reviews, status check-ins. They meet once or twice a week. “We go over the entire thing,” Lavender says. “And they’ll catch things I didn’t see, or vice versa. It’s collaborative.” But all of it, he insists, begins before a deal ever touches the pipeline.

That’s why he checks income history early. Really early. “If you’ve got nine months of overtime and bonus, but I calculate it like you’ve had two years, I’m screwed,” he says. “We don’t run into those situations because I verify everything before they even go shopping.”

That kind of upfront rigor has become a calling card. “We’re not surgeons,” he says, “but these are still major life transactions. When I’ve made mistakes in the past, I lost sleep over it. I had days where I couldn’t disconnect. So now, I just don’t let that happen.”

He knows the stakes. “Forget the money they spend on an inspection or appraisal,” he says. “Think about the heartbreak. They fall in love with a house, and then we tell them they can’t afford it? That’s brutal. I don’t let that happen.”

Early in his career, Lavender battled social anxiety and sleepless nights after client calls. But through mentorship, self-hypnosis via audiobooks, and sheer repetition, he rewired his mindset and built a process that now runs on confidence and clarity.

There’s a touch of PTSD in the way he describes early errors. Any miscalculations or missed documents. But what’s emerged in their place is a preapproval process that reads more like underwriting. His team doesn’t just collect paystubs — they trace income histories, confirm employment types, evaluate bonus schedules. It’s exhaustive. It pays off.

“It makes everything downstream so much easier,” Lavender says. “It’s good for me. It’s good for the agents. Most importantly, it’s good for the client.”

“Mortgages are a team sport,” Tehrany says. “It’s not just Ben. I helped him build most of the team around him. And it’s always refining. He’s always adding players, figuring out the next move.”

And that, ultimately, is the reason the machine works: it’s built with care. “We try and anticipate problems before they happen,” says Lavender. “It’s not foolproof. But it’s better. And that’s always the goal.”

“You Have To Be Very Mindful”

Lavender’s business today is smooth, efficient, and borderline impenetrable, but only because he’s spent years identifying (and limiting) the chaos that threatens to tear it all down.

“I used to put out perfectionism,” he says. “Everything’s perfect. I pick up my phone at 9:30 p.m. on weekends. I’ll answer your text in 30 seconds.”

It worked. Sort of. The files came in. The phone kept ringing. But there were issues.

“What that attracted was people who demanded perfection and didn’t respect me,” he says. “They’d leave to save two cents. Or if anything went wrong — even if it had nothing to do with the loan — they’d blame us.”

He doesn’t play that game anymore. “If that is your personality,” he says, “I don’t want to work with you. There are plenty of loan officers who will.”

He doesn’t sell a perfect process. He sells one built to withstand reality. “I can’t eliminate stress entirely,” he says. “But I can limit it. I can prepare for it.”

That clarity — that unapologetic sorting mechanism — is what makes the system sustainable. “We’re the right fit for that 10% of people out there,” Lavender says. “And I’m okay with that.”

But don’t mistake peace for passivity. He’s not done.

“I’m trying to 10x my volume,” he says. “And not even maintain the level of service, but improve it. That doesn’t happen on accident. You have to be very mindful and work toward it.”

Tehrany believes it can happen. “He’s already gone from doing one or two to 15 or 20 in a given month,” he says. “He wants to test his own boundary. Can he engineer a process that gets him to 50 loans a month? A hundred? It’s doable.”

Mindful, in Lavender’s case, means ruthless time management, intelligent delegation, and a neurotic devotion to process. But it also means time with his fiancée. Meals with family. Stillness.

“I want to be healthy into my 50s, 60s, 70s, God willing,” he says. He’s not sprinting anymore. He’s pacing himself. Like a marathoner with a machete.

“I’ve accepted that nothing is ever perfect,” he says. “But it has to be far better than the average mortgage experience. And that, I’ve achieved.”

And so he wakes up, makes his content, schedules his events, trains his team, and lets the machine do what it was built to do:

Close.