Rebounding From Failure ft. Mike and Mike

Welcome to another edition of The MikedUp Show! We’ve had a lineup of incredible guests on our podcast during season 4, but we thought it was a good time to say that not every meaningful conversation in mortgage needs a guest. Sometimes the strongest episodes come when we Mikes simply stop and talk honestly about what the industry is feeling in real time.

A while back, we dug into one of the most relevant topics in today’s market: how to deal with failure, how to keep moving through fear, and how to rebound when the path forward feels a lot less certain than it used to. Our discussion was deeply personal, but also practical, touching on leadership, isolation, sales, and the emotional weight that so many people in mortgage have carried through the last several years.

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REFRAMING YOUR FAILURES AS GROWTH

One of the most important ideas from our conversation together was that failure only becomes fatal when it is treated as a final verdict instead of a life lesson. Early in our chat, Mike Z reframed the topic entirely by suggesting that what many people call failure is often just part of growth, something that happens to everyone all the time. “We’re not really rebounding from failure per se,” he said. “We just keep growing.” This outlook turns a mistake or an error into an opportunity to improve.

As we all know too well, in mortgage, failure is often measured in ways that are blunt. Not enough calls. Not enough sales. Not enough appointments. A bad month. A missed hire. A lost client. A product that did not scale like it was expected to. And on and on. We pushed back against the idea that these outcomes should automatically be read as personal defeat. Mike K described failure as something that, over time, has greatly motivated him rather than paralyzed him. He talked about looking in the mirror after painful setbacks and choosing to see experience earned and a lesson learned, not abject defeat. The hours spent struggling, rebuilding, and learning did not make him weaker. In his view, they made him more prepared to bounce back than many of his competitors.

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8:03 - 8:48 -- "I feel like right now we are in the first-grade level of the mortgage industry. And the reason I say that is because as we try to discuss failure - and I use the word 'try' because trying means that you have a willingness and understanding of failure - we're not really rebounding from failure per se. We just avoid it and keep going. I think if we have the willingness to reframe the ability to rebound from perceived failure, it can be a career-long thing."

WHAT YOU LOSE WHEN YOUR PRIDE LIMITS YOUR SUCCESS

The conversation became even more compelling when Mike K got specific about one of his own biggest lessons. He talked openly about pride, control, and the difficulty of getting out of your own way. In hindsight, he candidly described pride as one of the clearest contributors to Easy Mortgage Apps’ struggles. There was pride in building something early. Pride in being ahead. Pride in pushing a vision before the rest of the market caught up. But there was also pride that made delegation harder and certain decisions slower than they should have been.

Instead of staying locked on the clearest path forward, the company wandered into projects that pulled attention away from the core opportunity. Looking back, he called that one of the best lessons he learned the hard way. Simply put, they got distracted from what they most needed to be. This hits especially hard for management and sales because it touches a universal truth. Growth often requires admitting that what got you here will not get you there. That is uncomfortable. Many aspects of the job are uncomfortable. But we submit that the willingness to get uncomfortable is often what separates the people who recover from those who stay stuck.

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10:03 - 10:55 -- "Failure to me has always trickled in. It wasn't overnight or a big Black Swan event. Rates went way up a few years back. The whole world sort of turned upside down. But I'm always able to say that we gotta wake up the next day and move on... There's two ways you can handle it. You can either look in the mirror and say, "You're a failure" or you can put in the work because failing means you just gained real world experience."

BEING HANDS-ON CHANGES THE WAY FAILURE STINGS

There’s a big difference between simply working in a business and actually building something. Mike K described how much of the meaning at Easy Mortgage Apps was tied to the act of building itself. At its peak, he noted, Easy Mortgage Apps had 32,000 loan officers and $500 billion in loans moved through the platform. “That is something to be proud of,” he said. And we both agree that IS a reason to be proud.

Failure is often judged externally by money or market outcome. Did it dominate? Did the competitor win? Did investors get what they expected? But lived experience is more complicated than that. When you build something, the process changes you. The meetings, the setbacks, the product pivots, the late nights, the people you led, and the customers you served all become part of your skill set whether or not the final scoreboard says you won.

11:42 - 12:18 -- "We've interviewed so many leaders of this industry and the one thing it seems like they've all consistently done is consistently work, consistently achieve, and consistently manifest the types of things they need to do in order to be a leader... You don't get to that point without doing. That means multiple tasks, multiple calls, multiple meetings. Multiple multiple multiple."

Full episode

To hear more lively discussions and special guest insights in the realm of mortgages and real estate, check out TheMikedUp Show with Mike Kelleher and Michael Zau, every Thursday at 2pmET!

THE ABOVE IS A SUMMARY OF INSIGHTS & ANECDOTES TAKEN FROM AN HOUR-LONG PODCAST EPISODE OF THEMIKEDUP SHOW. MIKE & MIKE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO PARAPHRASE WHEREVER NECESSARY.