Aaron is an Oregon native, born in Corvallis and raised in Portland. He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from Portland State University and has been in the mortgage business for over 30 years. He started as a loan officer assistant in the early 90’s and has been a self-employed broker/owner since 1996. Over his career, he’s closed over 10,000 mortgages. He’s blessed to be a father of two and to share his work life with an amazing team at Capital M Lending.
“For me, the long game works. Put the relationship in front of the money, and the money will work itself out.”
-Aaron Nawrocki
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode of The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE. Got a special guest for us today. I get to interview an individual who it's always nice to come in and say, this is one of my closest friends, let's not do that. I've known Aaron actually. Aaron, you and I met a little while back, but I've really come to know him a lot recently, and I think we're just going to have a great talk today, just given what you do and how you do it. So, Aaron Nawrocki, say hello to the insight interview world.
Hello. I'm happy to be here.
There you go. There you go. Well, Aaron, we're going to kick off by certainly asking you what you do. People want to know, why am I listening to Aaron? And I think we're going to get there. Before we do that, we have a little bit of a tradition here, and that is just to ask the simple question as we get going. Aaron, what are you grateful for in this moment?
Well, that's a great question. Oddly, you know, I'm really grateful that my business is off probably 80% since its peak, because it's created an environment where we've been forced to examine (my team and I) a lot of the traditional ways that we've done things and we've found a route to personal improvement. Maybe just I have to answer that question a little bit more deeply, because we want to feel good when we leave work, when we walk out the door, and in an environment where we're not going to be able to base that on closed loans. We've made a conscious decision to base it on open discussions about our activities and thoughts and behaviors, so that we can find a way to feel productive in our days when we're moving into headwinds. So that's what I'm grateful for today, is to be part of a team that's able to share that commitment to self-improvement. Yeah, it's what I wake up thinking about these days.
You see? And you thought, where were we going to go with this dialogue? I'm trying to decide in this moment, do I ask you to tell us a little bit about who you are? Because even what you just said, I have so many questions for you, it's not even funny. But I'll tell you what, we'll come back to that. I'll write my question down. Would you mind giving us a thumbnail? Who's Aaron? Give us maybe just a Reader's Digest. I'm sure you're a quite complex guy. It's got a great history but give us a little background. Who are you? And I don't know, tell us about you.
Okay, well, it's a topic I'm not always super comfortable with, but I'll do my best. So, I'm from Portland, grew up here, went to a very small Christian school. There were three kids in my graduating class, if you can believe it. 29 kids, K through twelve. Lot of independent study. So, I grew up setting my own goals and achieving them, but also, a kid who was probably socially pretty behind. Went to Portland State, went to undergraduate and graduate there. And when I was there, I was fortunate enough when I was 21 to be asked by a person who I respected if I wanted to be her assistant. This is about 1991, 1992. Rates were coming down from 14 to eight and a half, and she needed an assistant. So, I was going to graduate school nights and worked for her during the day. She started her own business, her own mortgage company, and asked if I wanted to become an originator. At 22, I had no real downside, no overhead, wasn't married, no kids, so it felt like an opportunity I could take advantage of. I grew up, my dad was self-employed, so I felt like I could make that step and had the honor of working for her. She was a person who was a wonderful mentor, very strong, morally, ethically. And in 1996, after working for her for a period of time, I learned a lot from her. Still think about her today, but decided that I could do some things differently and went out on my own. Started a shop with another fella called Mortgage Advocates, and then in 2011 became Michael Sullivan's, business partner at Capital M Lending. And I've just had an evolving business in the mortgage industry for the last 30 years. And you asked what I was grateful for. I'm equally grateful that I was fortunate enough to find a career that I loved at 21 and have had ups and downs and challenges and successes and failures, but basically have woken up every day ready to go to work. It's one of the absolute blessings of my life.
Holy smokes. That's just so fantastic. I got a lot of questions about that too. Thank you. That was a really cool synopsis. Want to go back to your original thing really quickly. If I heard you right, grateful for the business being off, that sort of reminded me, Aaron, from time to time we run into people, they've had cancer maybe, or they've been sick or something really tragic happened to them, and later on they think of those things as a blessing because of the path that it put them on to become an elevated human being. Did I hear that right? That's something similar to what you said?
Yeah, I think that's analogous to what I'm describing because 21 and 22 were amazing years that I had never seen in terms of volume and earnings and just sheer units. It was also a time when you're just going from one thing to the next and I think that I was not as present for my clients as I would like to be, and that's a piece that's so fulfilling for me. It's a reason that I made the decision when I was, like, 26 that I didn't want to run a mortgage company. I wanted to have some folks I could work with. But I love being an originator, and I didn't want to manage people, and I missed that. And when the harder you work, the more you make, I think, for me, and I don't think I'm alone in this, that becomes a goal, and it really wasn't the piece that feeds my soul. It's great. I mean, I feel very grateful for the money I was able to make in that time, and especially now when it's slower. I'm happy that I saved a bunch of it. It allows me to be present for this second season, but, yeah, it wasn't as fulfilling as I find my job now. And part of that, I think, is aging as well, Steve, I don't know. I used to hate when my dad would say, well, the reason you don't understand is you just haven't seen the sun rise and set enough times. But of course, the older I get, the smarter my dad becomes. And I think there's a piece where there's like a happy nexus here of me being 53 and this season in my life.
If you were to teach that, because you can't just teach someone to age, right? Hey, just wait till you're 53. But if you were to impart because I've heard you say a couple of things, I'm really honing in on this just passion for what you do. And especially these days in your line of work, there are quite a few people who don't have a passion for what they do. And I don't want to conjecture as to why that might be. Is it that because their goal is set only on one thing and they're not resetting it to the activities? I mean, I hear you talk about being present with people and that's what feeds your soul. That just sounds so right, and yet how do we impart that upon other people? How would you go about doing that? Could you teach a class on that? How do you do that?
Well, we actually talk about it in my office. Thank you. I think that's an insightful question. We talk about the difference between how we have a limited amount of bandwidth in our interactions with people, and once we start working to script an outcome, it subtracts from our ability to be present. And so, imagining if you're my client and what I'm thinking about is how I'll get you to work with me, that consumes bandwidth, that prevents me from being fully present with you.
"So, if I were to say what the key thought that I have when I pick up the phone when someone calls, it's going to be letting go of the outcome and trying to ask questions that will help me determine why they've called and what I can do to help them."
I just want to sit with that for a second. It reminds me, again, forgive me for all these analogies, it just reminds me of like when I watch any sport, it seems like professional athletes have long figured this out. Baseball, basketball, football, golf, pick a sport. These people that are in the middle of the sport teach themselves not to focus on the end of the game, right? They all probably want to win too, but in the game itself, again, you're going to forgive me, but I seem to like the game of golf. I watch it and some people don't, and I totally get that. But they always shove a microphone in someone's face like, oh, how'd you win, Joe? And they start talking about being present, hey, I didn't get ahead of myself. They weren't thinking, I'm going to win this tournament. It seems to me like when people think that, it's just like you said, it's the wrong energy. Is that what I'm hearing you say?
Yeah, I think it's misplaced energy, and I think to stay with this sports analogy for a second, there are times where circumstances are going to prevent us from being successful in a way that we're used to. And this is an example, the season we're in right now in the mortgage business, and I think the folks who've had success in sports or other arenas apply the same effort to doing the task that is directly in front of them, whether it's likely to create the same success or not. They're not working backwards from the end goal, they're working forward from the proper activity. And for me, in this season, the proper activity is to move away from, I'll use 2021 as an example and some not so great activity, I'm trying to finish an email, I'm talking to somebody on the phone and I'm thinking what I got to do next. And I have mercy for myself in that moment. I was overwhelmed, so I'm not ashamed of it, but I'll also talk about it openly. Was I present in a way that that person needed in that moment? Probably 60%, and I want that number to be closer to 80 or 90%. And for me, what that looks like is turning away from my computer when I'm speaking to someone on the phone, writing down in a notebook versus typing things, maybe looking out the window or even standing up and walking around. I've developed some little practical things to help me stay in the moment. In the same way that, to use your analogy, the really good free throw shooters have a certain routine or even really good golfers, that puts them in that moment, where maybe they take their stance, stand over the ball, take a deep breath so that they can be present in that moment. So, kind of an oblique answer to your question there.
No, it's wonderful. Again, I've done a little work in sports with different athletes. If you look at tennis, I'll ask my clients sometimes this question. Have you ever noticed in tennis, between points, professional tennis players, they all fix their strings? They're noodling with their strings. That's somebody that Aaron has educated them. That's a trigger to go be present. They might have just won a point, lost a point, flared a shot. I don't know. It could have been good, it could have been bad. They fixed their strings. And that's just someone going when you focus on that, it's not that their strings are probably fine, that's just something that they use. That's their 80 or 90% with people in their thing. So that's awesome that you do that. It's not very common, though. Now we're getting into philosophy. Aaron, there just aren't many Aaron Nawrocki's out there. And again, not to put other people down, but it's so common to focus on the end result, and especially in business, and maybe there's some people listening, going, hey, all this activity and stuff and being with people, I'll tell you what pays my bills is loans, man. Like doing stuff. And so that seems to be common. When you hear and see that out there, again, not that I'm asking you to focus on it, but what do you think about that? When you see what's so common out there for people to focus on this end result, I'm just curious, what are your thoughts about that?
Yeah. I think it's hard to play the long game. And I think that for me, it's a personality fit that has made it easier for me because I have to kind of go to how my own philosophy has evolved a little bit, which is when I started in the business, I remember making cold calls and how much I hated it and how much I would get nervous in the car. And as I mentioned, I grew up in an environment where it was very cloistered, so I was not a person- I was probably pretty backwards socially, which played into that. I'll take the probably out of it. I was backwards socially and so would get uncomfortable. And so, I used to find myself in this trap of not doing something that I hated to do, but expecting myself to do it and then beating myself up about it. And so I remember I was probably 25 when I was like, this is just the dumbest thing. You're never going to do this, so why don't you find out what does work for you and that you will do 70 or 80% of the time? And even if it's not a perfect solution, it'll eventually come to pass. And so, my philosophy was I would just really work on connecting with the agent representing the seller, because that's often the agent in our business that doesn't get a lot of service and that I would use a rifle rather than a shotgun.
And I found that that's something that I could do because it was more of a warm introduction, and I could find some peace and I could do it repeatably. And so, I think for me, I developed my own little philosophy, and it plays into what's happening in my life right now, which is that I think that new salespeople are very transactionally focused. They gauge their success by the number of transactions they close that week, that month, that year, and that, to me, is a mirage. And there's a cycle for folks in real estate and mortgage where they have a couple of good months when they close their sphere, and they think they're great. And then when that sphere is gone, they close fewer deals and they think they're terrible, and then they quit, and so I think for me, as a new salesperson, what I came to believe is that I just needed to find that 70% solution and that new salespeople often fail because they're looking for the perfect solution to close every sale, and I don't think that that exists. It's a question of what you will do repeatedly and that is authentic to the type of relationship you want to build and the person you want to be. And then I think the challenge, once you've achieved some success, is to stay open minded and be open to change. So, I think old salespeople fail because they want to do things the same way. They don't adapt to technology; they don't adapt to the different needs that people have. So just to stay with this thought, and I'm getting a little long winded, but I promise I'll come to the point.
No, it's wonderful. My hand hurts. I'm taking notes. But keep going. Keep going.
The person I grew up just loving basketball is one of the loves of my life and leaving it behind was really hard for me as I've aged. But one of the folks I looked up to was Coach Shoshewski from Duke, which, if you don't love Duke, that's fine if you're a North Carolina person, but one of the things that I took from him is he built a basketball program based on guys that were going to stay there for four years. That became a paradigm that would no longer sustain his program. And he was able to adapt and say, how am I going to get these fellas who are really good basketball players that are only going to stay for one year? And he was able to make that adaptation and define success, and that flexibility for someone who was probably at the peak of his profession is something that I really took as analogous. Not that I'm at the peak, but here's a fellow who had a system that 100% totally worked, and then the dynamics of his business changed and he was able to be humble and say, maybe I don't have all the answers. Maybe I do need to adapt and to successfully adapt in this new environment. So that kind of plays into what's happening for us in our world here with my team and I as we make that evolution. And I want to come back to your question, which is that for me, the long game works. And as I talk about these things, I'm conscious of the fact that there's some things that are personality fits for different people. And my answers, I want to stay humble, definitely work for me. They may not work for everybody, but for me, this idea that we're always going to put the relationship in front of the money and the money will work itself out is something I learned from my dad. I grew up, he was a sign painter and very gifted artistic person, but he also had this beautiful side of his other brain where even though he was always a one man show, from him, I learned a lot of business acumen, and I remember as a young person him telling me, and my dad's been gone a couple of years, so it makes me emotional when I talk about it, but he said, Aaron, hey, look, man, there's a couple of things about being self-employed. One is when you start, you measure what you did that day, and then you moved a week, and then you moved a year. And then eventually you find a confidence that you're doing the right things and you stop measuring output and you only measure what you've done that day. That's in the environment in which I find myself in this moment. And he also said, there will be key inflection points in your business that you need to be aware of. And they're almost always surround a conflict between maintaining a relationship and some type of money outcome, and if you put the money first, that relationship will die. If you put the relationship first, you'll always have plenty of money. So, to come back to this question, and I'm working there, I promise, for the folks who are like, I have to close this sale, in my opinion, that is self-defeating thinking. If you say, I have to meet this person's need and what will develop this relationship, I believe the money will naturally come from that. And it's hard because the reason this is such a challenging business, and the reason folks can have a great deal of success, and everyone doesn't make $45,000 a year is sometimes for those good works to come back to you.
"I think when people start in this business, I tell them it's going to take three years, and no matter how good you are, you're going to have to figure out a way to get through those first three years, because while I believe this to be true, it's not something that's going to create a change in outcomes in ten days."
I'm grateful for this platform of a podcast and I literally pray that the people listening to this will record the last three minutes. First of all, what's your father's name?
Tom. I miss him. He was a great man to me, man. Nobody's a perfect parent. But the gifts that he gave me.
But those lessons, I beg people, I beg you, if you're listening to that, re-record that and I don't want to make you say it. I almost said, could you say that again? I don't like when people do that to me because I'm like, I didn't practice that. I don't have it written anywhere. It's kind of a one and done. But this concept of the long game that you learned from your dad of focusing on people and let the outcome go is not just something that you and I could teach as a business lesson. What I'm hearing you say is it's a lifestyle and something that brings you joy. And for the record, if you do that well enough and this is the irony, you and I could talk about this, it's a paradox, really, the money probably will come and the minute people get that, then I see people putting stuff out there about here's how to make money and they ruin it all over again because you're constantly in this balance of letting that be, but then you get it and it's human right, Aaron, to develop this positive correlation. Okay, well, wait, doing that gets me this. And then people go and focus on that and here you are spending your time going, no, I'm going to continue to focus on not the outcome. Let the outcome be, but humans in being in this. And it's what brings you joy anyway. And you learned that. And I'm sure there are people that have tried just write a book about that. What are the five easy ways to do that, Aaron? And that's a soft skill and it's not easily trainable, but my hope is that people listening to that can really hone in on that and hopefully do some self-reflection and ask some good questions around it of themselves.
Well, I'd just like to dive in and say that I'll speak to my own anxiety in the season is it's a time that's challenging because the things that we as loan originators do that have been successful aren't having the same outcomes. And believe me, I'm facing that as well. But the thing that I'm so proud of in this moment, especially of Tyler and Christian, the fellas who work with me, is we made a conscious, spoken decision that we're going to double down and that we're going to trust that this season to concentrate even more on how we use this and leverage this time for growth. We're not going to let the reduction in volume distract us from that. But believe me, it's funny when you mentioned, hey, what would you say to somebody? I suffer from the same anxiety everybody does of resisting that urge to change everything because it's not working today. So, I don't have it all figured out either. I fight a constant battle to stay true to the things that I know feed my soul and not be distracted by the measurable outcomes that aren't what I expect.
Wow. I love that. I love the recognition of that. There's a great saying in neuroscience that says if you can name it, you can tame it. That you're not out here going, I'm the master of this. No, I struggle, too. That's probably what keeps you in the game. Look, I'm going to ask you for an encouragement because when you were speaking and by the way, I could go back to the Coach K concept of flexibility, which requires humility, that's a whole other podcast, Aaron, just so you know, you're going to come back and we're going to do a whole other one on that. I've noticed that as things get difficult for people not even in mortgage, it could be real estate, there's a lot going on in the world right now, right? Just people that are struggling, as the perception of our struggle drops us on, let's call it Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and we just like, oh, my God, I got to pay bills and I got to do this, as we drop lower on that need, some of what you're saying becomes like the long game. This joy that you find in doing this, it becomes elusive because it just sort of feels like I got to put food on the table or pay bills. And that's a perception, and it might even be reality for some people. How would you encourage those people to adopt or even just listen to and begin to understand some of what you're saying?
Yeah, that's a hard question, but I'll do my best to answer it. I think financial pressures can't be ignored, and we all have mortgages to pay and food to provide for our families. So that's such a practical thing. And my answer is somewhat soft. I do think there's a couple of things there. One is, I do think that there's this belief that we're all doing it alone. And one thing that has been helpful in this season for us is that the fellows who work with me and I, we work in the office and we're together because I think that the foundation of relationship is shared pain. And I grew up in a family where everything was always fine. You go to dinner, how was your day? It was fine. Well, I do think that for folks who are facing these challenges right now, I think what exacerbates that is a lack of community. And I'll just draw a distinction, and this is Steve, if you said, Aaron, what are you the most proud of in the last year? I'll tell you. And I was raised that pride is a sin, but that's okay, I'm going to go ahead and express it anyways. It's that in my experience with the fellows that I work with, when we're frustrated by a client, and let's be frank, all of us are frustrated at times with the folks we serve. It's just nature. What we've decided to do is to talk about our experience instead of the client. So instead of this guy's a jerk, we say, I'm frustrated about X or I'm disappointed or my feelings are hurt, and I'll tell you that focus on what our experience is not only brings me closer to these two gentlemen that I consider to be friends and not just employees or coworkers, but I'm feeling the same thing and it opens that door. And what that does is it gives me a sense of power where I'm no longer adrift. If these are my feelings and you said, if you can name it, you can tame it, then we can actually talk about solutions because clients are always going to be frustrating. We're always going to face financial pressures. Those things aren't going anywhere, but if we can talk about what our experience is with other folks who are experiencing the same things, I don't know, man. I don't know how the universe works, but there's something about that that allows me to make change, and that internal change that I make does affect my outcomes and it affects my clients’ outcomes as well.
I'm so grateful that you were able to articulate that the foundation of relationship is shared pain. You've already said like, five things where I just want to mic drop and go, okay, folks, later, goodbye. Just go have a drink of that. So, thank you for that. There's a rock and roll band called the AVET Brothers. I don't know if you've ever heard of the AVET Brothers, also from North Carolina. I think I could be wrong about that. That's the second reference to over there. They have a song, they say, I want to have pride like my mama had and not like the kind in the Bible that makes you bad.
There you go.
So the kind that you shared was the kind that your mama had. I don't think that makes you bad. So anyway, I think it's really cool that you're proud of that. Again, I'm hoping people can hear this. I might want to go back really quickly to the flexibility thing, because you tied that to humility. That Shashewski, he built a thing, it was successful, and then he had to change the thing and he did. And you tied that to humility. Like there's a humility to do that. Can you just speak to that a little bit more?
Yeah. And I want to reflect to you that in reading your book, what I recognize in myself is that mostly my resistance is the desire to be right and to find security in that, and I think, for me, I'm a little bit of anxious person. I crave security, and I definitely like everyone else that's listening to this podcast, I like to be right. But it's really been an amazing journey for me, man, because it's one of the reasons why I love to have new employees come in, because I will tell you that often they've been folks who are perhaps don't have the history that I have in the business, but every single person that we have brought in as an employee has added something. Whether it's a different way to explain things, whether it's a different way to interact with the client, whether it's an adjustment to new technology that I was unaware of. And I don't know, man, I have a natural aversion to talking about my own success. That was what I was probably the most nervous about, because one thing I get really uncomfortable with is when people say, I closed X number of units or I made X number of dollars. I just don't like those conversations. And so, for me, if you said, how have you been able to stay humble even though you've been blessed to have some good success? I think a lot of it was the way I was raised, to not be too full of yourself and to be a little bit anxious about being that person that walks into a room and tells everybody how great they are. And so, I think I'll thank my parents for that as well. That I've always believed. It's an old trope, man, right, where people say, my dad always said, you got a 96. Why didn't you get a 97? There's a little bit of that in me that you mentioned how sometimes insecurity can be a driving force. And I was thinking about this conversation, and I am a little bit insecure. I'm not afraid to admit it. It's been one of the driving forces in my life that's enabled me to make the progress in my life that I've needed to. I think I have it in a pretty solid place as far as not allowing it to dominate my psyche, but I'm a little insecure, and I'm a little afraid of not being open minded, and I'm a little bit afraid to say I have all the right answers, and that, I think, has allowed me to be accepting of change. And I think also I've seen enough people fail by being unwilling to change or being inflexible that I just watched that, and I was like, gosh, I just don't want that to be me. So that, in conjunction with my insecurity, I think, has led to me being open minded.
Oh, my gosh. The angles that we could go again, if you can name it, you can tame it. And your ability to name that, I always couple that with a saying by Carl Jung, right? The great behavioralist. He said, what we resist persists. So, if you name something Aaron, and you're like, you know, I'm a little insecure, that's a naming of it. If you spend time going, don't be that, don't be that, don't be that, that'd be like a guy standing on the free throw line thinking to himself, don't miss this one, don't miss this one, don't miss this one, and we're taught at a pretty early age to practice a different thing, right? Because what we resist persists. So, your confession of that seems to me more like an awareness of it, and to me, I think it's brilliant. I might even name the podcast afraid to have the right answers or something like that. I don't know. And I think it's just brilliant and it probably keeps enough humility in you to keep going. But see, even saying that to you, what a weird compliment, right? Like, what are you supposed to say? Oh, thank you. You're probably uncomfortable right now just hearing right?
Yeah, compliments make me uncomfortable, Steve. But thank you. I appreciate that.
Well, I wanted to end the podcast by going, how much money do you make and how successful you've been, and tell us all about you, Aaron. How many loans did you close? Like, no, we won't do that. I think what we've learned today has just been incredible. We got to go like, this is enough. It was enough a long time ago. Is there anything that, as you think about and reflect on what we've said, I want to give you, like, oh, this one last thing, or is there something that I didn't ask you that you hoped I would?
Well, you didn't ask me what I hope for, and what I hope for myself and for my team is that this season will end, too, and we'll be busy again. And I hope that we make space to openly talk about how we'll stay diligent and honor the path that we've chosen when we don't have the extra time or when the money is out there, and we want to chase it. So that's like the next thing, because in a couple of years, this will be different, and I don't want to lose traction or go backwards from the progress that we've made together. So that's the next thing. That's my hope.
Brilliant. Well, let's sign off with hope. How's that?
I love it. Thanks for making some time, Steve. I appreciate the impact you've had in my life and appreciate the chance to talk with you today.
Well, again, my only regret is carpal tunnel syndrome. I couldn't write fast enough when you were going, and I would love to have you back and explore some of these things further. Your mindset towards these things does bring us all hope, and it's my hope that your hope gets fulfilled. So many insights today, folks, and as we say, every know on The Insight Interviews, Aaron had some incredible insights. It doesn't matter what really his are, mine are, really what matters is you as a listener. What were yours? What did you take away? And so, Aaron, thank you again for being a part of it.
You bet. See you soon.
Have a great day. And we'll see you next time on The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE.
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