Frank Hurmoz is the co-founder of Hermiz Lending, an independent mortgage brokerage in the state of Michigan. He has over six years of experience in the mortgage industry and is widely considered the top choice for speed, service, and experience. He founded Hermiz Lending with his wife, Madana. Frank and Madana have been married for almost 5 years. Madana is the founder of Hermiz Law, a parent company to Hermiz Lending. She specializes in divorce/real estate law and she’s one of the top women attorneys in Michigan.
In this episode, Steve Scanlon and Frank Hurmoz
discuss
“We're not order takers. We're humans.” – Frank Hurmoz
Connect with Frank Hurmoz
---
I got a really cool guest for this episode. I have the luxury of meeting people all over this fine land. It's always fascinating to meet people in some unexpected places. I live in an unexpected place unless you're me, and then it's home. It all feels a little weird to everybody else when they're somewhere else, I suppose. Now, I get to introduce you to someone who I got to know a little bit. I'm looking forward to having him on the show. Without further ado, Frank Hurmoz, say hi to The Insight Interview world.
Hello, everyone. I hope everyone's doing well. I'm excited to be on the show.
Frank, we're going to get into who you are and where you came from. You have an absolutely fascinating story. Here at the show, as we're listening to your thoughts, how you think about business, how you think about life, and where you came from, it's often very encouraging as we get to this fascinating river of life from different people. I can't wait to ask you about your background, your life, and all that stuff. Before I do, we have this tradition. I hope people appreciate it. We're coming up on Thanksgiving. We're going to do a whole show of this. I want to know before we even dive into it about what you're grateful for.
I'm grateful to be in America. I'm grateful to be an American and to even have the luxury of having a passport that's American to where I can live my faith, live my views, teach my kids the traditions of my family, and do it in a place where you can do it freely. That's the beauty of being in America. We thank God for the United States.
Believe it or not, I interview a lot of Americans, as you might imagine, and I don't get many saying that. I know we all feel that at some level. We have songs around that, God Bless America, and all of that, but you come at that from a very different place, don't you?
My family comes from Northern Iraq. There's a village in Northern Iraq called Alqosh. It's not big. It's in Northern Iraq where Kurdistan is. They're our neighbors pretty much. This land goes back very far. Traditions go back thousands upon thousands of years. Thank God for my family keeping this alive, instilling this in me, and teaching me about the traditions, the faith, and how we came up.
Now, you're an American.
Exactly. To give you a little bit of the backdrop of my family's story, my parents were living in Iraq. At the time, I wasn't born, but I asked my dad in detail what was the story of us migrating over to Greece, that's where I was born. We came to America in '89. The story that my father told me was he was in the military. Him and his buddy were off duty. They were having a drink at a local pub. It was primarily military individuals.
My father and his friend were speaking Neo-Aramaic, which is Chaldean now, the language of Christ. One of the officers that weren't Catholic didn't believe in the Catholic religion view. He heard my dad speaking to his friend, and he's like, "I don't know what that language is, but you got to stop speaking that." My dad strongly believed these are our roots, this is who we are. We don't need to change how we talk, whether someone's telling us.
My dad wanted to stand up for something. Long story short, there was a little scuffle, and my dad ended up getting shot. He was in a coma for a few months. According to the story that they were telling me, he wasn't supposed to make it. Somehow, some way, through the grace of God, he made it. From there, he was in a lot of trouble because he assaulted a ranking officer in the military. That's when he took my mom, my younger brother, and my sister who was a few months old.
They ran up the mountains and hid in the mountains for a couple of days with just the clothes on their back, maybe a couple of thousand dollars, and a dream to come to a land where you can be free, think freely, and be whoever you want to be. From there, they ran. They went over to Jordan. From Jordan, they went over to Greece. That's where I was born in '88. We migrated over to Michigan. We lived in the inner city of Detroit for about ten years, and then we moved to the suburb. That's the backdrop long story.
We all have YouTube and television. I suppose we could go out and find those stories. When you hear one that's so personal like that, Frank, I got to be honest, I'm one of those Americans I don't know that I thank God or express my gratitude for our country because I probably am one of those people that take it for granted. Then I hear a story like that. My insight was maybe I shouldn't take that for granted.
I'm a first-generation American. Even though my intellect opened up in America where I can start learning my first language, my second language was English and my first was Chaldean. My dad was very big on instilling the language in us so we don't forget who we are and where we come from. I'm thankful every day that I'm in a place where I can go out and I can wear a crucifix, speak about my faith so freely, and be able to do the things that I want to do going from point A to point B, and to a certain degree, not having to worry about my safety.
That's the big part because we still have Chaldean Iraqis that live in Iraq, and a lot of them are poor. When the whole issue happened back in 2015 and 2016 when ISIS went in and took over Mosul and took over those villages, a big percentage of that was our people. That's why I'm hearing those stories about people that hadn't heard because they got displaced. One gentleman hadn't gone to mass in about a year but he found out that there was a priest that was going to celebrate mass.
He walked and took a bus. It took him about five hours to get to the mass, where I had the luxury of just jumping in my car, and driving down the street. That was the light bulb moment where it's my generation of the Chaldeans that are growing up in America, we're spoiled. We never really had to go through these adversities. Everyone has adversities and struggles to a certain degree, but those are life-altering, life-changing situations that they went through and that they continue to go through. For me, how dare I not be thankful to be in a place where I can express myself freely? I've been given that grace.
Be thankful to be in America, a place where you can express yourself freely.
It's unbelievable to walk around knowing that and to hear you know the gift that is. I want to thank you. I'm grateful for you now because my gratitude extends to the idea that you helped me, and probably many other people reading this have gratitude for some things that we probably just likely take for granted, so thank you for that.
I didn't just pull you out of the streets of suburban Michigan as a Chaldean to just come to talk on our show, although, that's super cool. There are probably people going, "Tell us more about that. That's fascinating." It's such a great backdrop, Frank. You're also in business. You have a business of your own. I have half a mind to just ask you some more questions about why you're walking around the world.
I'm a free book.
A lot of people read this because we do get ideas for our life and insights for all kinds of things. Give us a little bit of the backdrop about, even vocationally, how you ended up where you ended up, what you're doing, and how you think about certain things. It would be awesome to just hear a little backstory about where you are vocationally, if you don't mind.
I got married a few years ago. I'm expecting my first child in March of 2023. We're going to be having a baby girl. I'm super excited to be a father, to share that love with my wife, and to grow my family. Vocationally, where I started off, several years ago, I entered the Catholic Seminary School, an accredited college here in Detroit. It's called Sacred Heart Major Seminary. I went there for three and a half years studying to be a Catholic priest because I felt that there was that draw to be a priest and serve God.
Throughout my vocation and my discernment within that school, my senior year in undergrad, I felt like I wasn't called. I felt like I was being called to be a married man. Here I go again. First, I was going to college for Business, then I go to college for Philosophy, which is a yin and a yang to a certain degree. Now I'm leaving the seminary with a Bachelor's in Philosophy, and I'm like, "What the heck? What am I going to do with this?" You can't get rich. It's not even just about getting rich. It's more so about being able to provide for your family. How am I going to provide with a Philosophy degree?
How are you going to provide for your family with a philosophy degree?
You then got into the mortgage business.
First, I got into the automotive industry. I worked there for a few years. In 2019, my older brother kept telling me like, "I work for this amazing company. You have to come to work there. They're revolutionizing the way mortgages are being done. They're absolutely dominating." That's United Wholesale Mortgage. I worked there for a few years. Now, I'm a mortgage broker. I own a mortgage company called Hermiz Lending. That's where I am at.
Tell us a little bit about those transitions. We're in a crazy time now in mortgage banking. I'd love to hear about how you transitioned into that. Furthermore, I'd love to hear about how you are navigating this particular season in the mortgage and real estate industry.
The way that I transitioned was, a year and a half before I ended up leaving UWM, I just had the gut. I went over to the secretary of the CEO of the company. I said, "Would it be okay to meet with him and talk to him?" I want to pick his brain. This is the guy that took being a mortgage broker from where it was initially, dusted it off, revived it, and made it cool again to be a mortgage broker. Getting insight from him, how he worked his company, and how he grew his company from 12 people to 9,000 people, that to me meant the world. He didn't have to meet with me. There are 9,000 employees, but maybe he saw something in me.
Maybe it was just my tenacity to just walk up to his office, and ask for a meeting. Long story short, I got the opportunity to be mentored by him where we would meet fifteen minutes twice a year. The last time that I met with him, I told him, "I see where the mortgage industry is going, and I want your blessing to open up my brokerage because I learned so much from you and the company."
Here I was before, coaching mortgage brokers on how to go out to get business. Everything that's happening now, we were preaching that a few years ago. We were telling brokers to get realtor partners, go out there, promote themselves, and get on social media. This is just where it is now what we're dealing with. Interest rates are going up and home values are up, so the mortgage industry has slowed down. For me, it was an easy transition because I got the opportunity to learn from that, and I applied a lot of these methods to my business.
I've yet to buy one lead where everyone is mumbling and groaning that the mortgage industry is down and refis are down. I don't know anything else. This is all that I know. I opened up my brokerage this past March, so this is all that I've known as an independent mortgage broker. It's going out there, hustling, and putting myself out there. Maybe 100 I get denied. One time, a real estate agent gives me the opportunity to work with them. How I've been navigating through it is building that referral and organic business, not being an order taker.
I'm not pointing the finger at anyone, but because of the abundance of refinances that were happening in America, there weren't enough loan officers. For loan officers, they didn't have to chase business. The business was falling on their hands, on their laps. Now, we became order-takers just like Apple. If you notice, Apple doesn't really have sales associates, to my understanding. Everyone knows what Apple sells. Its product speaks for itself.
A lot of these associates that are there are just taking your order. They don't have to go out there and pound the pavement to get their product out there. They'll release a phone, and millions of people are in line ready to get it. That's how I'm trying to build my business where it's a brand. It takes a lot longer to do this. It could be discouraging at times, but you just have to keep pushing because you never know when you're going to hit the oil pipeline where it's just going to burst.
My partner and I own this coaching company. I've been taking notes as you've been talking. There's a handful of things that you have said that you've given me such great insights. For people reading this, some of it might seem fundamental, but how often do we need the fundamentals again? Here's a fundamental that you've talked about, and people might go, "We get that," but how about this one? Hustle.
Hustle. You're on call all the time.
If I'm hearing you correctly, the hustle in a lot of people over the last few years, just because we were order takers, and many people were order takers, we lost that, and so here you are going, "No, get it back. Have it." If you hustle, there's business out there. We just have to really hustle. You seem like you're pretty objective about the fact that you're not going to build this overnight, but it's going to take time. So what? Keep pushing. I wrote that down.
Everything that we do now is not going to pay off today or tomorrow. It's not for another 3 to 6 months that we see the fruits of our labor. If you're going to go at it in 3 to 6 months thinking you're going to crush it, you're going to have a rude awakening because this is not the industry where you're just going to crush it off the bat because that's the way the industry was before.
Now, you got to go out there, shake hands, kiss babies, go to people's events, show your support, and take the extra step to show people that you care about them. Humanize yourself. We're not order takers. We're human. We have emotions, too. Treat the other individual not like a transaction, but as a relationship.
We're not order takers. We're humans.
I want to go back a little bit. I want to ask about Mat. This guy's mentoring you albeit not very often but some, and he really helped you. When you said, "I want to go away," was he the kind of person that said, "Yes, go," and he encouraged you? Was he bummed to lose you? I'm a little bit shocked by that act of abundance because he's listening to a guy that sounds like you. I'm listening to you, and I want to hire you because you have this great mindset. That matters so much. Did Mat encourage you? Did he support you? I don't want to overlook that. I don't want to also put words in your mouth. Was he encouraging you as you did this?
Absolutely, 100%. He told me, "I'm sad that we're going to lose you, but I want to support you in any which direction you want to take. Anything that I can do? We're family." That's the thing that he instilled in all of his employees, especially me. We're family. I'm always going to send my business to UWM not just because we're family. It's because they knock it out of the park 10 out of 10 times. He encouraged me.
That's an act of abundance you don't often find. Sometimes people, if they were talking to a guy like you, they'd be like, "No, you can't go anywhere. We love you." They'd hold you back. I didn't want to overlook that. It just seemed like that was a pretty spectacular act. It should be. That's a human act. I hope there are leaders reading. Frank, maybe you're going to have an employee one day, and he's going to come to you and go, "What's it like to start your own thing?" Are you going to help him?
Absolutely. There's a loan officer now that's not part of my team. I was hanging out with my buddies, part of another brokerage, and he was asking me questions about the mortgage process. I broke it down to him on a whiteboard how it should look and what he should do. He told me, "Would you mentor me? Would you teach me?" "Absolutely." He's like, "What can I do for you?" "There's nothing you can do for me." People have sat down with me and have given me their time, so it's only right that I pay it forward.
You can't lose by giving people information. You can't lose by teaching someone else. If you teach them how to fish, they're always going to come back. There's a misconception, "I want to keep the information to myself, so they always come back to me." What's a community? A community is a group that comes together and works together towards a common goal.
You can't lose by giving people information or by teaching them.
For someone to build a community, whether every business has a community of following the people that want to work with them and give them their business, but the way that that happened is you added some type of value. You gave them something first to show them how they can change their life, whether it's through advice, giving them a tip, them saving money, or whatever it is. They take value from it, and they're always going to come back.
How is your Aramaic nowadays?
The Neo-Aramaic is great. I speak fluently. At one point, when I was at Sacred Heart, I was studying Ancient Aramaic. I was learning how to read and write. It was a lot of fun. The Neo-Aramaic, in every village there's slang and there are different terms. Just as it would be the accent here in Detroit versus the accent in New York, it's English, but two different accents. That's what it is, but it's good.
Your daughter is going to be born in March. You've already given us so much. Let's say twenty years from now, and you still have Hermiz Mortgage, it's grown, you've been blessed, and all of this stuff. It's all great. Your daughter wants to come into the business. I'm just trying to do some projection exercise. If she were getting into business, what would be the things that you would tell her? It's like, "These are the most important things about this business, about business in general." I'd love to hear your wisdom with regard to how you one day want to hope to tell your daughter about how to be in this world and be in business.
I would tell her, "Be brave. Throw yourself out there." That's what my father did to me. I remember I was scared like heck to swim, and my dad one day just picked me up and threw me in the pool. It's like, "You're going to learn. You're going to drink some water from the pool, but you'll figure it out. You'll make it out." Maybe not to that extreme, but I'm going to tell my daughter to be brave. Be yourself. Be brave. Don't be afraid of rejection.
If you want to get into the mortgage industry, you have to be brave and put yourself out there.
At the end of the day, it's a numbers game. Like some of these retail lenders, they call and probably fire off 400 or 500 calls a day, and maybe they only get 2, 3, 4 loans, 5 loans from those 500 dials in a day. To many, that stinks. The percentage of being able to turn someone into a client stink, but the reward is so much better.
Be brave. Be yourself. Don't be afraid. I love it. What else? Anything else?
Go out there and build a brand. If you're going to build a brand, everywhere you go is your brand. That's what I would teach my daughter at a young age getting out of high school. The way that you present yourself on social media, would you want to do business with that person? Having that brand as a total package, the way you introduce yourself to people, the way that you'd be by yourself and someone looking from across the street viewing you, would you want to do business with that person?
What a great amount of awareness in that. I wonder if people are looking at their own social media sites. That was just such a great thing to ask, "Would you look at that and want to do business with that?" That's such exactly a cool thing to be aware of. You've also brought such a great spirit of abundance and gratitude that you have based on the stories that you've told. Abundance is a huge part of what you are, seems to me. Let people go when they need to go. Encourage them. Help them. I've got all these insights. You're not going to lose teaching and helping people.
No, you can't. What about Dale Carnegie? He taught millions of people. How long ago did he write that book? He gave people his insights. He wrote that book. You have Napoleon Hill. How many years did he do a study and ask tens of thousands of people that failed versus a couple of thousand people that were the ones that succeeded? He gave his life's work. He put it out there. Why hold that to yourself? Keep it going.
That is really great. If you can believe it, we're out of time.
This is awesome. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you for having me.
You're so kind, and I love your story. You're one of those people I'm going to stay in touch with because just listening to you, if you are a horse at a race, I'd bet on you. The mindset that you bring to the table is really fantastic, and I'm grateful to you. Thank you so much for being part of the show. There are so many insights here. I hope the readers can go back and read this from the very beginning when Frank was talking about his gratitude about even being here and not taking things for granted to what it means to hustle and build a brand and be brave. Frank, thank you so much for your time. Shalama to you.
Shalama to you. Thank you so much for having me here. I really appreciate it.
You're awesome. Everyone will see you next episode.