Make More Money In Any Market

Geneva’s founder and CEO Aaron VanTrojen coaches his originators in the belief that when your team succeeds, you succeed, the elegance of which arises from the self-sustaining culture it creates. Thus, Geneva attracts originators who possess the optimism of rookies and the diligence of veterans, infused with the ambition of entrepreneurs. “Like-minded people that are grateful and positive and ambitious,” as Macdonald describes employees across the company.

“If you want to work here and make more money than you’ve ever made before and have the autonomy to do things, then come work here,” says VanTrojen, who encourages his originators and branch managers to adopt the mindset of small business owners. But, he adds, “I expect you to be a professional. I expect you to be a manager.”

VanTrojen was born and raised outside of Seattle, Washington. His father, a career fireman, instilled in Aaron a civil servant’s ethos: do better by yourself by doing better by those around you. It’s baked into the company’s mantra — “Be A Good Human” — and it’s why, at Geneva, VanTrojen serves the Kool-Aid over ice: Geneva’s originators are VanTrojen’s clients.

As CEO, he tries to deliver more value to his employees than what he earns, encouraging his originators to do the same with borrowers. “If you’re bringing more value to the table than you’re getting paid for, that’s a win.”

The Grass Isn’t Greener

Holly Haggard joined Geneva Financial in June 2019, then left the company three months later to lead a handful of branches for Independent Financial, a commercial bank headquartered in McKinney, Texas. The producing branch manager from Prosper, Texas, never imagined she would be back in Geneva’s warm embrace by mid-October.

But, Haggard had never worked for a bank before. More of a long vacation than career move, “it was that bad,” she laughs. “It was almost as if their word of the day, or word of the year, or word of the lifetime, was ‘No.’” At Geneva, she says, it’s completely the opposite. “It’s like the word of the year is ‘Yes,’ you know, ‘let’s find a way.’”

Haggard originates with a particular focus on jumbo mortgages. She initially left Geneva because she saw Independent Financial quoting better rates for larger loans. “I want to have something that I would give myself,” Haggard says, “or that I would give to a family member” when it comes to quoting rates for borrowers. Ethically, she could not, in good faith, originate jumbos with Geneva when she knew her borrowers could get a better deal around the corner.

Despite the quoted rates and abundance of leads the bank provided, however, Haggard quickly learned that the grass wasn’t greener. Every loan she submitted was contested, Haggard remembers. The bank’s underwriting help desk “didn’t even know the guidelines. We would argue back and forth. It was a constant fight on every single loan that I tried to put through.”

Having originated for more than two decades, Haggard knew that the borrowers the bank turned down could certainly get approved at Geneva. “When you’ve been doing loans that long, you know the ins-and-outs and what you can and cannot do, and I’m not talking illegal stuff.” So, with permission, Haggard began referring these borrowers back to her old company.

Much like VanTrojen, Haggard was raised in a public service-oriented household. “My dad was a cop for 38 years, so I’m a very by-the-book, ‘Do it Right’ type of person.” The “Make It Work” mentality at Geneva does not entail cutting corners or skirting regulations, though, as Haggard’s banking colleagues assumed whenever she fondly remembered (out-loud) how Geneva was a “Yes-Company.” “They don’t do any of that,” she says. “But, they find ways to do it right. They find ways to help instead of — and I feel like I’m repeating myself, so I apologize if I am — but they find ways to help people get into a home, or get a better rate, or get into a better situation.”

As for Geneva’s borrowers, so for Geneva’s originators. When Haggard asked for her job back merely a month after leaving, Rachel Caple, chief sales and revenue officer at the company, did not blink, but found a way to make it work.

Haggard adjusted her margins across her branch, lowering her net compensation to around 250 basis points so that she could lower her rates for jumbos. On paper, lowering compensation to achieve more competitive rates seems like bad business for originators. But, Geneva’s branch managers — all of whom produce — enjoy the autonomy to set their own branch margins. So long as the loan officers make their exact amount, Haggard can make pricing exceptions by adjusting her margins across the board.

By leaving for even just a month, Haggard says she learned a valuable lesson: the lowest quoted rate does not a closed loan make. “They can say their rates are this or that, but if it’s taking the first-born child to get it done, then it’s not worth it.”

Controlling Your Own Destiny

When the market began to turn in mid-2022, Geneva’s individual branch managers — not corporate — decided whether they wanted to chase rates to the bottom. When VanTrojen talks about protecting originators’ ability to determine what value they offer clients so as to achieve their own definition of success, this is what he means.

“What I want to do,” VanTrojen explains, “is teach people how to become as valuable as they possibly can so they have the potential to charge 400 [basis points] if they want to charge 400, or if they decide that they want to be a discount shop, they can charge as little as they want. It’s literally on them, but I’m trying to teach people how to become professional and valuable, and I’ve given them the tools to maximize profitability that the competition doesn’t.”

It was this flexibility and culture of accountability that drew the Las Vegas-based Uyehara to Geneva Financial in early 2023. “One of the biggest frustrations I’ve had in my career,” Uyehara laments, “was you really don’t have control over your destiny.”

Though he only just celebrated his one-year anniversary with Geneva, a ten-year anniversary isn’t too difficult for Uyehara to imagine given that Geneva provides him with everything his previous employers didn’t. The large mortgage companies that Uyehara has always worked for — Prospect Mortgage, New American Funding, Citywide Home Loans, Mutual of Omaha, and loanDepot — don’t empower their originators to originate, he says.

Where loanDepot would erect barriers, Uyehara has found that Geneva tears them down. Of particular frustration to Uyehara were the “three, four, five, maybe six layers of management” above him at loanDepot that constrained his innovation and opportunities for growth. Uyehara left loanDepot thinking that he no longer wanted “four guys above me that were dictating what I needed to do every day when they really don’t understand what we’re doing and needing because we’re boots on the ground.” He sought a company that would invest in his growth, too.

Because he generates many of his leads through social media, loan officers and prospective borrowers often solicit Uyehara from all across the country. loanDepot’s company structure prevented Uyehara from recruiting or expanding his operations beyond his assigned region. Turning down crucially important business, particularly in 2022, not only undermined Uyehara’s ability to originate, but loanDepot’s broader success, as well. It made no sense to him.

When the market began to turn in mid-2022, Uyehara experienced how bureaucracy at the large national lender bred costs, confusion, and ultimately, fewer loans. Cracks in the business that fistfuls of cash had filled during 2020 and 2021 had emptied, deepened, and widened. Cuts at loanDepot were aggressive and unpredictable, which only increased the pain and uncertainty for rank-and-file loan officers, processors, and their families.

As a branch manager, Uyehara had boots on the ground, but also a seat at the table. The false assurances of solidarity and support that executives made on company-wide calls were lies.

“We’d get on a manager’s call,” he recalls, “and they would say to us as managers, ‘Well, we need a name. I need a name,’ and they would keep pressing us for that, ‘I need a name, I need a name. We’re gonna fire someone,’ and I started to push back on a lot of that.” When a pair of billion-dollar producing divisions departed loanDepot, Uyehara began talking to VanTrojen. “If those guys aren’t staying and fighting the fight here,” he reasoned, “there’s got to be something that I’m just not privy to at that point.” Those conversations with VanTrojen resonated with Uyehara, particularly in their tone and tenor.

Some people find VanTrojen’s direct, candid style off-putting, Uyehara says, but “that’s the way you have to look at the business today. It’s not about what you need to hear, it’s about what’s going to actually keep you successful.” Though still able to close about 15 loans a month in 2022, he left loanDepot in January 2023 to protect his team, first and foremost.

In the year since joining Geneva, Uyehara has expanded his operations from one branch to four, spread across Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. As he builds out his division, Uyehara does less originating and more business development, earning commissions for recruitment, too. He loves the flexibility and autonomy, not only for originating, but how, as a branch manager, he is encouraged to run his branches like his own small business. Uyehara makes his own P&L statement, deciding how he sets his margins and how he pays his people.

If the market worsens, he says, “We can control our destiny. We can control how we get paid.”

The Benefits Of Ambition

Following 13 years as a top-producer in the consumer direct channel at the Atlanta-based Lennox Financial Mortgage Corporation, Macdonald joined Geneva in 2018 after Lennox dropped his compensation from 75 basis points to 72 basis points. “I needed to learn to become an outdoor cat and learn how to get my own deals,” he recalled thinking at the time.

Macdonald’s halfway through reading Think and Grow Rich, a landmark personal development book written in 1937 by Napoleon Hill and Rosa Lee Beeland. He’s reading it — for the hundredth-or-so time, he says — at the recommendation of VanTrojen. Since joining Geneva he has learned that the autonomy and compensation Geneva’s originators enjoy create a positive feedback loop that protects originators’ ability to originate and makes Geneva more resilient.

“You can kind of attract the best with higher pay,” Macdonald says. By industry standards, he says he overpays his operations teams because as a branch manager he gets to make that decision — the paradigm is profitability. “It’s like a Dream Team because we’re attracting the best underwriters and processors because they can get paid more.” Better people, he says, drive efficiency. “If I get a contract on Friday, I’ve got the approval out before Monday Night Football.”

The natural logic to Geneva’s sustained success seems obvious to outsiders, but when you look around the industry, Macdonald says, everyone seems so miserable. Not at Geneva Financial, though. “That’s the belief in knowing our team is so good. You can’t just be average and believe in yourself. You gotta know that you’re the best. When you have that and your team is the best, then you can go represent with confidence.” At the same time that a strong performance culture and generous compensation motivate employees to maximize their potential, the scalability of Geneva’s model incentivizes branch managers to shepherd more good humans into the fold.

Despite rising mortgage rates and plummeting originations, Macdonald has expanded his operations from three to 28 branches over the past 15 months. Recruiting enables Macdonald to study the P&L statements of many of Geneva’s competitors, offering him a glimpse into pricing and compensation structures across the industry. He rarely sees Geneva beat on pricing and never sees Geneva beat on compensation; it’s the best deal for both borrowers and originators.

When he finds a new recruit, “We just do the math,” Macdonald says. “Usually, it’s one of these like, ‘It sounds too good to be true’ kind of things.” For example, Macdonald is in the process of onboarding a Texas team that nets 175 basis points as a branch. Without even changing their pricing, Macdonald says, the Texas branch would net 325 basis points with Geneva. “If they wanted to, they could give their client 100 [basis points] better than what they’re currently giving them, saving them a point, and they would still make 50 bps more, 225 net.” For every member of the Texas team he’s onboarding, it’s a no-brainer.

While many mortgage companies struggled in 2022 and 2023, VanTrojen refused to chase rates to the bottom or compromise on compensation. “We didn’t have to do any of those things,” VanTrojen explains, “and of course the company can’t lower margins because we don’t make very much to begin with by design. It’s on the branch managers and the loan officers to decide whether or not their value should go down just because things get challenging. They decided that it wasn’t going to go down.”

What’s still killing branches, Macdonald explains, are the corporate margins that, 16 years ago, VanTrojen started Geneva to eliminate. “I’ve never seen anybody do it the same,” says Macdonald. “Other corporate margins, from what I’ve noticed, are maybe 200 bps, whereas ours is 50. It’s just less — he’s taking less. There’s nobody between a branch manager and Aaron,” which grants branch managers the benefit of their ambition and the leeway of the liquidity that their own branches generate.

When Macdonald’s best friend of fifteen years, also a mortgage veteran, told Macdonald that he was thinking of returning to Lennox Financial, Macdonald wouldn’t allow it, and instead recruited his friend to Geneva. Macdonald’s friend tells him that second to marrying his wife, joining Geneva was the best decision he had ever made, and even recalls his wife remarking shortly after he joined the company: “Well, you’ve got energy again.”

The credit goes to VanTrojen. Macdonald feels the same way. “I’m waking up pumped every day,” he says. “Like, what’s today gonna bring?”

A Better Way For Originators

The night that Haggard hung her hat with Geneva, the hat she’d hung seemed to lose its hook when Haggard fell and broke her hip. “God had other intentions for me,” she laughs.

And yet, the following week, Haggard received her first “Monday Mindset” email from James Polinori, the company’s chief marketing officer. Geneva does not provide leads, but the marketing team does much of the heavy lifting to help originators generate leads. Haggard had only ever worked for mortgage companies that provide originators with “like hundreds and hundreds” of leads, so hanging her hat with Geneva was a risky move in the first place.

Little did she know she had nothing to worry about. The Monday Mindset emails, for example, “teach you everything that you need to know, and everything that every successful wwperson within the company is doing,” says Haggard, depending on market and industry trends.

“People are out there paying these loan officer coaches and boot camps, and all kinds of crap they’re spending thousands and thousands of dollars on,” she says. “We have that in an instant in our email from our marketing team.” Add drip campaigns and social media posts to weekly coaching sessions, and Geneva’s new recruits find themselves off the ground and running.

Income-wise, Haggard does not need to close loans every month to survive, she says. “My husband takes care of us; my stuff is kind of gravy.” Having been a sales and branch manager at other mortgage companies, she now enjoys being a one-woman branch and not having to do “all that babysitting.” Nevertheless, as an originator, she appreciates working for a company that she knows has her back — or rather, hip. It’s been that way since she joined.

“I literally just started getting calls and emails, and this is throughout the summer when I was planning on not working,” she explains. Even real estate agents, whom Haggard is loath to cold-call, frequently cold-call Haggard. “The marketing that they put together, it actually has those people that loan officers are scraping to get in front of — it has those people coming to us.”

She adds, “It’s too good to be true, but it is true.”