On an average day you can find Anthony Marone driving home at dawn, the sun just beginning to edge above the Jersey skyline, one job behind him and another about to start.

He clocks out from the night shift at the police department, catches a few hours of sleep, then heads into his mortgage office around noon. “My day is usually a 12 to 8 instead of the 9 to 5,” he says. “It actually works better for me.”

It’s not the kind of double life most people would choose, but then again, most people aren’t built like Marone. He’s admittedly a bit “ADD,” unable to sit still for too long, and says that when he and his family go on vacation, he has a hard time chilling out. “We go to the beach for 10 minutes, [I’m like], ‘All right, what are we doing?’”

What he’s not doing? Relaxing.

Marone, who runs the show at Lend Mortgage in Morgansville, N.J., has been dubbed “your friend in the mortgage business.” And if you count up all the awards he’s received since he started lending, it seems like he’s got a lot of friends.

He’s one of the Top 1% of Mortgage Originators in America — and not just once, but for several consecutive years. His trophy shelf includes marquee industry honors: Scotsman Guide Top Dollar Volume and Most Loans Closed; Five Star Mortgage Professional from 2018 through 2024; Social Survey’s Top 100 in America; and Experience.com’s Top 1% for 2023. Forbes Magazine even named him one of the Top 100 Market Leaders in America for Mortgage Bankers back in 2020. He was also profiled in both Forbes and Fortune in 2021 and 2022.

Funny thing is, he never set out to build an empire. He just wanted to get off the extra shift.

“Detective Work, But For Mortgages”

Marone wasn’t trying to dominate at first, that wasn’t the point. “My goal was just to do a couple loans a month,” he says.“Not work overtime at the police department.”

That’s it. That’s the whole pitch. He started lending in 2014, chasing a little side money, and before long, he was closing over $100 million a year. He credits his rise not to ambition alone, but to the guidance he had from day one. “Regardless of where you’re at in life, you always need a mentor and you always need a leader. You always need a coach. You need someone in your corner cheering you on, showing you the way. And that’s at any level, right?”

Marone made a point of seeking out top performers and absorbing everything he could. “I needed to be with people that were on that level. So my goal was [to] surround myself with people that were best of the best. And along the way, I picked up a little bit from a lot of those people. Also …you need your processes in place.”

“Anthony’s a very driven, hardworking guy,” says Steve Grossman, who previously employed Marone at NJ Lender’s Corp. “I mean, he has a full-time job as a police officer. He’s very entrepreneurial.”

When Marone first started, everyone he knew on the force was getting a real estate license. While no hard data exists on how many police officers transition into real estate, specific local examples stitch together a pattern; for example, Ryan Springer, a Southold Town police officer with 19 years on the job, who started selling homes around 2006 as a side gig. Texas’s Brittani Firestone, a 14‑year veteran of the Dallas Police Department and part of the Texas Attorney General’s Fugitive Unit, left the force in late 2018 and pivoted full-time to real estate. There are numerous accounts, but Marone wasn’t interested in becoming one of them.

“There were really no active police officers I knew that were doing mortgages in the state of New Jersey at the time,” he says. “I might have been the first or maybe second.” He wasn’t into sales. He was into solving problems.

“I was always good with numbers. I was always good with solving problems,” he says. “I feel like that’s kind of what mortgage is. I’m almost a detective on each file I do.” Where others see paper, he sees clues. “We’ve been really good at structuring deals. I’ve never issued a pre-approval. We do due diligence up front.” Verifications, income, bonuses — he makes sure every detail is right before the borrower ever makes an offer.

Same Burger, Different State

Crafting an award-winning mortgage brokerage while working as a police officer isn’t a game of chance. It takes discipline. And a schedule as regimented as a Model T production shift. Marone, in fact, likens his process to an assembly line — think Henry Ford, each person has a role to complete over and over. He calls it his “Perfect Mortgage Process,” a 130-point checklist that covers every inch of a file, from the first hello to the final handshake at closing.

“Here’s your stage,” he tells new hires. “You’re the assistant? These are your tasks. You’re the processor? Here’s yours.”

Marone is un-precious and straightforward about the whole thing. Blips in the process might happen, but they better not happen a lot. “You do it again, you’re getting written up. You do it again after that, you’re terminated.” That’s how a guy running on four hours of sleep after a night shift builds a company that realtors trust more than the highest bidder.

“I always say it’s like McDonald’s,” Marone says. “You get the same burger in New Jersey as you do in Texas. It’s not the people, it’s the process.” That’s how he treats loans. Same structure, every time. Same file flow, same expectations, same results.

His personal routine is similarly tight, every bit as locked-in as the loan pipeline he built. Rather than a day of rest, Sunday is for planning. That’s when he maps out the week ahead. Who’s getting called. Who’s getting lunch. What fires need putting out before they even start.

“Sales is no different than a diet,” he says. “If you don’t prep your meals on Sunday night, you’re screwed by Monday morning. It’s the same with outreach. You don’t plan, you lose.”

So he plans. Every week. Monday: 100 realtor calls. Tuesday: pipeline review. Wednesday: drop in on CPAs and financial advisors. Thursday: lunches. Friday? A cigar and a couple of calls. The wind-down.

“I grab a cigar and just start dialing. ‘How’s business? You surviving? Rates killing you yet?’” he says. “That’s how you stay top of mind.”

And being top of mind is how you win even when you’re not the highest offer. “I had a deal where we were five grand under the other offer,” he says. “But the listing agent took ours because they knew we’d close. That’s the power of reputation.”

Your Friend In The Mortgage Business

For his reputation as “your friend” in the mortgage business, Marone is aware everyone might not be into his style. He’s fast-talking, direct, very Jersey.

“I know off the bat, listen, I’m not a great fit for everybody. I’m a little harsh around the edges sometimes …That’s who I am, though. 25% of the people I meet aren’t going to like me off the bat. And I’m okay with that. And that’s statistically, right? Not everyone is going to [be] like, I love you.”

For those situations, Marone has a workaround.

“I bring my guys to some of my meetings with me ’cause I go, there’s someone in that office that doesn’t like me. So I said, these are realtors I work with in that office ... go after those people because they don’t like me. You’re the opposite of me.”

Of course that only works when there’s a good team. With a staff of eight, and careful watch for personality and discipline, Marone tends to hire for attitude.

“Not everyone’s a perfect fit. Some people chase the sign-on bonuses, stuff like that. It’s tough. Recruiting is definitely a tough thing. I think it’s a lot about culture, a lot about personality … but what I feel is the work ethic, right?” And even with all that, he sometimes just takes a chance on a younger, less experienced LO.

“We have a couple newer guys I took a shot on … I think you gotta give back and you gotta bring up the next generation of loan officers … the problem obviously is the work ethic.”

Marone’s belief in bringing up the next generation of LOs stems from his early work with Steve Grossman, who, at the time, was CEO of NJ Lending Corp. As a newcomer, Marone was known for his energy and ambition, but it was his ability to follow through that left an impression.

“I’ve coached a lot of loan officers and mentored a lot of loan officers,” Grossman says. “And where Anthony is — where I compliment him — is he’s an implementer. If someone told all of us to go on a diet or do 10 exercises, 90% of us do it for one day and stop. One thing with Anthony: he’s very good at implementing and execution.”

The Long Game

In its current state, Lend Mortgage is chugging along steadily, but true to character, Marone has plans to get bigger. Currently licensed in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida, he’s got visions of 100 loan officers on his team, an army of well-oiled lenders with the mission to close. But all that takes time — and he’s not rushing anything.

“A lot of successful companies that are around 25, 30 years now … that’s not something they built out overnight or quickly. I think it’s a long steady drive to get to.”

With that in mind, Marone, though restless, is mindful about what he takes on. It’s a lesson he learned firsthand when his side hustle started to take on a life of its own. In the lull after the post-pandemic mortgage boom, he fulfilled a longtime dream and opened a high-end cigar lounge with a fellow cop. “We built it out really nice … 100 lockers, key card access, cappuccinos, macchiato, Pelligrino,” he says. “At one point, we had 150 members.”

For a while, it worked. Cigars were his one reliable off-switch. “I can’t sit still,” he says. “But cigars always relaxed me. That was the only time I sat still.” But among policing, lending, and cigar-shop running, something had to give. “I knew my limitations,” he says. “I can’t be working payroll for two companies.” In May 2025, he sold the lounge.

Still, cigars remain part of the routine. By the end of the work week, the pace slows just enough for a smoke and a few calls. It’s part ritual, part relationship maintenance — a weekly moment of connection before the grind resets.

The grind, for Marone, is the thing that keeps everything else moving — the constant rhythm of building, refining, pushing forward. It’s not glamorous, and it’s not always easy, especially in a market where even seasoned originators are struggling to stay afloat. But for him, structure is survival. “If you’re not growing, you’re dying,” he says.

With company growth on the horizon, Marone’s not pacing the floor like some cigar-chomping dreamer who only talks about disruption. He’s making lists, laying bricks.

“Why stay a small company?” he says. “Why can’t I take this to the next level? Why can’t I do what Bezos did?”

So he keeps at it — the cop with the file folder in one hand and the long view in the other. One more loan. One more rep. One more week of Sunday-night planning so Monday doesn’t kill him. You can call it discipline. You can call it obsession. But around New Jersey, they just call it closing time. And Officer Marone is always on duty.