Trusting The Process

A First and A Second Career

Originally hailing from upstate New York, Guidry relocated to Southern California during her early adulthood and landed a position as a receptionist at a mortgage company. From there, Guidry became a branch manager for Centex Corporation and Wells Fargo, respectfully, in her early twenties. She eventually held leadership positions at First Horizon National Corporation, PrimeLending, Benchmark Bank, First United Bank, and Guardian Mortgage, a division of Sunflower Bank. By the end of 2023 after 28 years in the mortgage business, the wife and mother of two officially transitioned out of being an LO. Her production for that year was just over $76 million, per Modex data.

Now, as proprietor of The High-Level Life, Guidry has launched an entire, unfamiliar career providing transformational coaching and speaking engagements tailored for mortgage companies and LOs.

“It kept on coming back and pulling me like, ‘this is what you’re supposed to be doing in this next chapter of your life’,” she says of this vocation. “It wouldn’t go away. I felt it with every part of my soul, my heart, that it was time for me to start giving back those things that I learned.”

Things like being successful without working around the clock. 

“I want to show other people how to attain success as a high producer, high-level achiever, but to also have balance in life,” Guidry says. “People in our industry think they have to work 24/7. You don’t have to work 24/7. You can still have an amazing career. You can still be number one. You can still do all these things, but come home to your family after work and enjoy vacations and spend evenings with your kids.”

She discovered this lesson after moving to San Antonio in 2005 and being diagnosed with cancer in 2007. That’s when she realized that she had to slow down and quit working beyond the typical 9-5.

“Once I recuperated and while I was healing I was like, I can’t do this anymore. It’s not worth it to me. It’s not worth killing myself to produce these numbers. So I figured out how to do both.”

In the ‘About’ section of her website, (thehighlevellife.com) visitors find out that “Jen is No Stranger to Adversity, Success and Overcoming” - atop a bulleted list of what can only be described as examples. They discover that she not only survived several close encounters with death, but she was once more than 100 pounds overweight, has originated over seven figures and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Not a stranger to the spotlight, Guidry served as a host of television’s Financing the American Dream and a local show, Selling San Antonio. 

Guidry is a bit of a celebrity around San Antonio, not just as a television personality, but as an author. Her two books. The Storm (2021) and Grit and Gratitude (2023), are described as a memoir and a self-help book for Christian women, respectively. 

The Storm was born when Guidry was out of work for four months. Guidry, who suffers from a blood clotting disorder, didn’t know if she was going to make it.  

“I wrote it initially as a legacy piece because I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it or not,” she explains. “It was written to help people that are going through their own storms in life.”

Grit and Gratitude, hailed as “a real-life conversational guide to living the life God has intended for you” received a near-perfect rating on Amazon. “It’s more lighthearted, written for a bit of a younger crowd,” she says. 

Guidry grew up Catholic, but she never really considered herself to have a good relationship with God until becoming an adult. 

“When I started bringing God with me everywhere I went, everything changed,” she says.

No Plan B

Time management and setting proper expectations are part of the magic formula Guidry prescribes to those in need.

“I’ve never had a plan B. I only have a plan A and it’s to work my butt off until I succeed in the thing that I’m going towards.”

She encourages LOs to find their niche and get really good at it, to the point that they become the go-to professional for that specialty. 

Her specialties included VA loans and construction loans, and she was able to make her specialty concrete by teaming up with Lee Randolph, the owner of the homebuilding consultant company U Build It. Guidry was working at First United Mortgage when she and Randolph first met.

“She was not only very knowledgeable but a better communicator than any other lender we had ever worked with,” he recalls. “We’ve been sending her people and she’s been sending us people ever since. We followed her along to different companies.”

Randolph describes Guidry as “one of those people who always goes the extra mile and doesn’t lord it over people how good she is. I don’t know any finer person,” he adds.

Guidry’s credo attests to her success. “It’s a pipeline, not a faucet. You don’t turn off and on a pipeline. You keep that thing open all the time, so you’re constantly building your pipeline. And what happens to a lot of people is they get really busy, then they turn off the faucet and then they stop doing all those things. And then their production goes up and down and up and down and up and down. But if you consistently work on putting things into your pipeline, it will come. But you’ve got to work on it every day. You can’t turn it off and on.”

With influencers gaining fame and fortune by sharing their lives on YouTube and TikTok these days, Guidry points out that people often forget the picture that hard work can paint. 

“For so many years, people got into the business and didn’t have to think. Loans came in and customers came in and they didn’t do anything to make themselves better. But those that did are the ones that are thriving now when it’s difficult…you have to have grit when it comes to this business. You have to keep at it every single day.” 

She considers the accolades and production stats as perks, not letting them define her. 

“That’s not the stuff that matters. The stuff that matters is seeing smiles on people’s faces and knowing that you helped change a life by the advice that you gave or just being on a team with someone. That’s the most fulfilling.”

Guidry is particularly interested in changing the conversation women have with themselves and each other far too much. 

“I feel like we don’t help each other. We compare, judge, talk behind each other’s backs. But I want to create this society where we help each other out. Like, I’ll pull you aside and say, ‘you probably shouldn’t do that’ instead of talking behind your back.”

Life After Loans

When she’s not jet-setting to a speaking engagement, Guidry is most likely with her family at their other house in Sedona, writing or hiking, balancing her busy life with moments of taking it slow. An avid hiker, Guidry has climbed mountains all over the world, but some of her favorite trails are right here in the American Southwest. 

“Especially when I was in mortgage, hiking is one of the things that brought me the most Zen and peace. When you get on the trail, you’re focusing on that present moment of time, that journey,” she says. “You don’t think about anything else.”

Guidry passed her book of business onto her former team at Guardian Mortgage in San Antonio, now headed by Sales Leader Kristin Fox. The two worked together for several years and grew close.

“We’re very similar in our values and our work ethic, and that’s really been the foundation of our success,” Fox says of herself and Guidry. “Regardless of how many loans she’s closing in a month or how busy the industry is, she always delivers excellence. And that is definitely what I will carry forward and what I’m doing to honor her and her legacy.”

But outside of loan originating, where Guidry is now, her character shines as well. 

“Jen is so genuine,” Fox says. “You know that whenever she is speaking to you, she is speaking the truth. It may come without a filter, but it’s definitely what a person needs to hear when they need to hear it. I think that’s why she’s been so successful in her career is that she just speaks from the heart. She’s honest, transparent, and straight to the point on things. She’s been so encouraging of my growth.”