Below is an excerpt adapted from our Inspired By podcast conversation with Mike Brennan, President of Nationwide Mortgage Bankers. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Jersey Roots, Carolina Home

“Born and raised in New Jersey,” Mike Brennan tells me the moment we connect. He and his wife Marta — married for twenty-five years, he notes proudly — now live in Charlotte, North Carolina with a wave of other Northeastern transplants. “All our neighbors are from New Jersey, New York down here,” he laughs. The move was partly lifestyle, partly opportunity: Charlotte lets him stay close to the customers and teammates he’s served for a quarter-century in mortgages.

Brennan’s people-first mindset surfaces even in small talk. He frames the relocation not around zip codes but around connection: every new street, church, or coffee shop is one more place to add value. The conviction foreshadows almost every topic we tackle over the next hour.

From Construction To Closings

Brennan never followed a conventional corporate path. “I was a kid that never graduated high school, never went to college,” he says. During the late 1990s he ran a small construction outfit rehabbing properties. Sitting across kitchen tables with buyers and tradespeople, he glimpsed the financing side. “It was just something that really intrigued me.” So, in 1999, he became a mortgage broker.

The transition demanded hustle and humility. Brennan’s guiding lesson: “Be relational, not transactional.” Realtors and financial planners referred clients because he listened longer and closed on promises. Those early victories taught him that in lending, numbers follow trust.

> Mike Brennan is president of Nationwide Mortgage Bankers. Under Brennan’s leadership, Movement Mortgage grew into a top-10 national lender.

Building A Shop, Surviving The Crash

By 2003 Brennan opened his own hybrid retail–wholesale company. Rapid growth ended abruptly when 2007–08 hit. “It was kind of a wake-up call for a lot of us … good times, bad times don’t last forever.” Shuttering the firm could have soured him, but Brennan reframed: the storm confirmed that markets fluctuate, while relationships endure. He spent the next several years consulting — an on-the-road MBA in troubleshooting.

Movement Mortgage And Leadership

Consulting introduced Brennan to Movement Mortgage, a then-emerging regional lender. He signed on to build its Northeast presence, and five years later he was named the company’s first president. “We were a top-10 lender,” he recalls. The real magnet, however, was Movement’s heartbeat: leadership, service, community investment.

Defining The “Impact Lender”

Inside Movement, Brennan started questioning traditional profit goals. “Success is about you as an individual; significance is about everybody else.” With branding help from friend Fady Hanna of Flagship, he coined Impact Lender: any company that redirects at least ten percent of earnings to local needs. Movement’s founders were already donating aggressively — eventually 49 percent of profits to charter schools, orphanages, and small charities — so the label crystallized a practice.

Brennan insists Impact Lender is open-source. “If you look at companies like Patagonia … they pour back into the communities they serve. We invited other organizations in.” The idea has since spread to several mortgage and non-mortgage firms that now benchmark giving as tightly as margin.

Skating Ahead With Nationwide

In March, 2025 Brennan surprised colleagues by joining Nationwide Mortgage Bankers (NMB). His rationale comes packaged in a Gretzky line he quotes verbatim: “You don’t skate to where the puck is; you skate to where the puck is going.” He believes NMB is already gliding toward new opportunities and cultural alignment.

On day one he helped launch NMB Cares, mirroring the Impact Lender framework. The foundation will direct double-digit profit shares into neighborhoods where the company originates loans. Brennan describes the recruiting effect simply: “You attract who you are.” Instead of cold-calls or signing bonuses, NMB hopes its give-back DNA will pull in loan officers who view mortgages as community development, not commodity sales.

John C. Maxwell: Mentor In Motion

Much of Brennan’s philosophy traces to leadership author John C. Maxwell. The two met in 2016 after someone told Maxwell about Brennan’s mission trips building schools in Guatemala. Maxwell was already working with the Guatemalan president on values-based education. “We got introduced, and I went on my first trip with John in 2017,” Brennan says. They have since traveled the globe together.

Brennan can recite Maxwell’s bullet points from memory:
“Connect authentically, be a plus, not a minus in the lives of other people … Equip and empower others … Intentionally be consistent … Measure your results … Grow your capacity … Commit to growth.”

Those lines aren’t empty aphorisms; they’re operating principles he reviews before strategy meetings.

A Guatemalan Epiphany

Asked for a single moment that reshaped him, Brennan points to rural Guatemala. A local liaison compared U.S. privilege to winning a lottery. “The only difference between you and the people in Guatemala is you were fortunate enough to be born in the United States.” The comment still rattles him: “Once you see something, how do you look the other way?”

That encounter birthed a personal rule — see something, do something — which governs decisions from philanthropy budgets to Starbucks drive-throughs. (During our interview he mentions buying coffee for the driver behind him after a stranger paid for his.)

Removing Roadblocks

Inside NMB, Brennan frames leadership as subtraction. “My job as a leader is to remove roadblocks for my team members.” That can mean clearing underwriting bottlenecks, but it also means modeling personal growth. He shares books like Three Feet from Gold with rookies and urges managers to replicate knowledge quickly: “Be a river, not a reservoir.”

Micro-Acts Of Generosity

Grand gestures thrill the press, Brennan notes, yet small acts compound faster. Maxwell texts five friends daily with words of gratitude; Brennan does the same. He invites listeners to try it now: send three sincere thank-yous and watch the replies. Such ripples form an ecosystem where kindness is currency.

Family And The 33-Percent Rule

Brennan’s why begins at home. “Thirty-three percent of your life will be spent with your work family, thirty-three percent with your own family, and thirty-three percent sleeping,” he quips. Merging professional and personal values, he argues, ensures integrity across all three domains. His goal is to “lift people up, help them achieve things they’ve never achieved before.”

Holding The Ladder

The ladder metaphor Brennan credits to Maxwell: anyone can climb; leaders hold the rungs steady for others. He finds “There’s no better reward than to see somebody come in … and make them better people all around.” That payoff, he says, outlasts any commission check.

Purpose That Stings

Brennan often tells audiences, your why should make you cry. If a goal doesn’t move you viscerally, it won’t move markets either. For Brennan, the goal is impact so tangible that communities remember a lender not for rates but for rebuilt playgrounds and scholarships.