A Dozen Ways Culture Will Make or Break a Mortgage Franchise
In this article
If you’re a loan officer or mortgage branch manager who feels trapped in a stagnant branch or bored with your career, consider what it might be like to work in a place with a thriving, successful workplace culture. Better yet, imagine creating your own vibrant mortgage branch culture, combining independence, compliance and support to succeed in today’s market.
Just about every major company is talking about the critical importance of workplace culture. A recent study by the Journal of Financial Economics found that, when reviewing the websites of the Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) companies, 80% include a section–sometimes two–dedicated to corporate culture. That is, “principles and values that should inform the behavior of all the firms’ employees.”
Well, that sounds great–all these massively successful organizations leveraging values based on innovation (80% of surveyed companies), integrity, and respect (70%) to optimize employee well-being, not to mention their bottom lines.
Here’s the thing. When the researchers evaluated the financial performance of the companies in the survey, they found no significant correlation between stating your company values innovation, integrity, or hot lunches, and financial performance.
It turns out that the organizations that lived their values and worked those values into planning and daily operations displayed a corresponding boost in financial results.
In other words, the people working for businesses whose words and deeds matched could (and did) tell true stories about what happened in their organizations, and those human stories explained the corresponding increase in their companies’ financial success.
MortgageRight allows branch managers, in a way no other company does, to run their business their way. Let’s talk more about how cultivating a healthy workplace culture can make, or break, your mortgage franchise.
- Freedom
You know what works for you, but maybe you’re being micromanaged and pressured into using inefficient systems. We hear this complaint often, and our founders experienced it firsthand as agents. We encourage our partners to use their vision as a guide. We trust that you are the expert on your process, and we’ll give you free rein to run with it.
- Flexibility
Perhaps you’re ready to start a mortgage franchise, but your unconventional schedule seems to be holding you back. Maybe you simply don’t want to be locked into the traditional eight-hour workday. MortgageRight acknowledges that people are individuals, each with their own work systems and scope of availability. Instead of insisting on stuffing everyone into the same square hole, we give people the freedom to set their hours and implement their proven systems for getting the job done.
- Opportunity
MortgageRight requires no capital requirement to start a franchise with us. Tell us what you’re looking for, and we’ll set up something that fits this point in your career.
We offer assistance with constantly evolving technology, branch benefits to streamline mundane and painstaking chores, and educational products and resources. Need help with marketing? Our in-house marketing assistance is available to every franchise partner.
- Work-Life Balance
So many companies pay lip service to their dedication to an authentic work-life balance for employees. It’s painfully obvious to everyone when that balance is lacking. Time and energy spent at work vs. not at work need a clear separation; when that separation doesn’t exist, what lies ahead, sooner or later, is clear—burnout. Work-life balance is arguably the number-one reason to choose a sustainable company culture.
Make no mistake—sustainable company culture can make or break your mortgage franchise. MortgageRight offered the real thing.
- Recruit the Best Talent
As a branch manager, you’re only as good as the people you work with, and MortgageRight gets it; we’re only as effective as the company we keep. That’s why we’re seeking people who care as much as we do about getting it right. We communicate, we’re available and responsive, and when issues arise that call for intervention from the “home office,” we’re prepared to support you.
When you launch your own mortgage franchise, it’s critical to align your branch with your values from day one. Even if a position seems nearly perfect on paper, 35% of American job hunters wouldn’t take an offer if their personal values clashed with the values of the company in question. We want our partners to feel confident that they truly belong, and we’ll allow you the liberty to treat your employees with the same consideration.
- Avoid Burnout
An effective company culture provides “pressure valves” to allow its people to regularly lower their stress levels without any sort of stigma attached. Many companies require employees to take a certain amount of time to focus on their well-being.
This is a balancing act. On one side, it’s crucial to hire the right people with the right skills, temperament, and work ethic to handle what’s in front of them.
On the other side, a savvy company provides normalized, in some cases mandatory, strategies for blowing off steam. This can be anything from a quiet space in the office with coffee and a comfortable couch to mandatory vacation time or friendly sports competitions.
MortgageRight partners enjoy a level of freedom and autonomy that can enable them to take on more clients and monetize their time more efficiently. They can build authentic, trusting relationships with clients that stand the test of time, and they can choose people who fit the “vibe” of their particular workplace to work with them.
According to a Gallup poll on organizational culture, people well-matched with their company culture are 68% more likely to feel motivated, avoid burnout, and stay with their chosen company for the long haul.
MortgageRight wants our mortgage franchise partners to stay with us too. That’s why we’re determined to maintain a strong, supportive culture that creates the right balance between the stimulating challenges of the mortgage profession and a comfortable opportunity to thrive and prosper.
- Less Friction Involved to Earn Higher Wages
MortgageRight takes a fairly simple approach to eliminate the infernal red tape that bogs down so many mortgage branch managers–we’ve dispensed with an entire, unnecessary layer of management to streamline agency experiences and simplify your processes.
As one of our branch managers, you’ll experience less friction in everyday operations, and that translates directly to faster underwriting, more time and energy to direct toward closing deals, and the satisfaction that comes with a successful enterprise.
- Cultivate Influence
It’s only natural when you’re successful at what you do to want to tell people about it. It’s also a tremendous benefit to your mortgage franchise in a couple of ways.
Spreading the news of your financial success builds your reputation as a leader in the field–a business that knows its business and can confidently advise others. Professional notoriety will bring in customers who search for the best in the business and come up with your brand.
The other side of that coin is that working for a successful, well-known company can boost company culture through the stories people tell of your successes, your approach to dealing with people, and the fantastic outcomes you produce—outcomes your clients, in turn, will tell their own stories about, further expanding your influence.
To encourage those stories about your clients’ success is to cultivate the kind of influence that brings in a steady stream of new business.
- Zero Cultural Issues with Management
Joe Meadow, Tanner Allen, and Chris Carter built MortgageRight to offer a better choice for home mortgages with a higher level of customer service. They broke out of their successful, traditional mortgage careers to streamline the entire process for clients as well as the branch managers who serve them. And because they did it at significant professional risk, they’re not going to mess this up by getting in the way of how franchise managers choose to run their businesses.
Whether you’re a branch manager seeking opportunities for growth or a loan originator on a quest for the most powerful loan platform on the market, MortgageRight is here to provide your leg up to success. MortgageRight is operated by producers, for producers. Your company culture will be one of your own creation, as it should be.
- Custom-Tailored Systems for the Right Candidates
Each of our clients has a unique set of needs and desires for their business. We’ll start with those, rather than try to impose a set of requirements on you of our own making. This is about setting you up as much in your way as possible.
MortgageRight is equipped to support you in, among other aspects:
- Marketing
- Lease payments
- Licensing
- Research
- Startup costs
- Technology
For example, if your branch needs laptops or other technology, we can provide it for as long as necessary. Our system is designed for one thing—to support our partners. Because when our partners thrive, so do we.
- Limitless Opportunity
Well, of course, there are limits. But we’re not going to set them. That’s going to be up to you and your business plan.
We operate under a case-by-case structure, so our ability to work in tandem with partners is infinitely scalable. We’re in the business of clearing obstacles so that you have all the space you need to get out there among the competition and grow your business. You decide what the limits are.
- Team environment
MortgageRight holds itself to very high standards.
A survey by BetterUp found that 40% of people feel isolated at work. Possibly worse, the same study found that 25% feel that they don’t even belong where they are.
These are two indicators of a failed company culture. Without a connection to a community seeking common goals, productivity plummets, and people are going to seek a more suitable position with another company—one that supports their professional goals and a sustainable work-life balance.
Team-building is essential.
We’re Here to Support You
Because companies are made of human beings, everything is personal. Many of us spend up to a third of our lives “on the clock,” so it stands to reason that we should put as much thought into company culture as we do into, say, what we eat or buying the right mattress to sleep on.
MortgageRight is a place where partners settle in for the long haul, something rarely seen in this industry. We’re here to help you set the ideal conditions in which your business can grow and thrive.If you’re interested in building your own mortgage franchise, let’s talk. Schedule a call with us, and see if our company culture is a good fit for you.