06-21-2023 Messaging Matters With Dean Harrington Of Shamrock Home Loans
What IS the secret to success in the mortgage industry? Get ready for an inspiring episode as we welcome Dean Harrington the CEO of Shamrock Home Loans. He shares the secrets behind Shamrock's recognition as the number one mortgage company to work for by National Mortgage News. Dean discusses his successful strategies for leading Shamrock Home Loans to become a top-performing company at the C12 annual conference in Denver. He reveals the core values that define the company's culture and why they are crucial in attracting and retaining exceptional talent. He also discusses how to create clear boundaries and foster a sense of safety within the organization. He shares how values create a lasting impact, increasing employee loyalty and protecting against external recruitment efforts. As the discussion progresses, Dean also explores the integration of faith in the workplace and how he navigates this aspect with grace and inclusivity. Additionally, he delves into the importance of addressing employee concerns and embracing problems as opportunities for growth. Dean's approach to enriching the lives of employees reflects the profound impact it has on the success of the organization. Tune in now and learn why messaging matters!
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Messaging Matters With Dean Harrington Of Shamrock Home Loans
I’m excited to bring to the show a new friend of mine, Dean Harrington. He’s the Founder and CEO of Shamrock Home Loans. In 2003, Shamrock was named the number one mortgage company to work for by National Mortgage News. We’ve got to find out why that is. Dean and I are both a part of an organization called C12. It’s a business group of men. A lot of people have heard about Vistage. This is where CEOs of companies get together once a month. Their foundation and common ground are, unlike Vistage, which has many faces, C12 is the best face around the Christian faith. It’s twelve CEOs that get around once a month. There are chapters over the world now. Dean was featured on a video on C12, and I go, “Why is it I don’t know this guy? I liked him.” We had our C12 Conference in Denver, and he spoke. I met him because Casey was speaking. He was up talking to Casey, and that’s how we connected. I got so excited when I heard him in his breakout session talk. I go, “We have got to share that with our audience.” Welcome with me, Dean Harrington. Dean, it’s good to have you here.
David, it is a privilege and honor. It’s the things I never thought I’d get to do in my life that I seem to be doing in this season of my life. It’s such a blessing. Even though you met me that day, I knew who you were. Everybody in the industry knows who you were. I ran into you at a Lenders One Conference a couple of years ago and had a quick hello to make a connection. I had intended on following up and making sure that we built on that relationship. That was what Denver was for, in part, to be able to connect with you after my talk and be able to tell you how fond I am of the work that you’ve done.
This is the season of time in our industry where it’s so challenging. C12 has been a powerful influence in my life. If the audience out there is wondering what it looks like from the inside out, it effectively means that someone like David and myself sits in a group with twelve, we are their de facto board of directors. In my group, I have eleven. In that group, I’m essentially on the board of eleven other companies and, likewise, they are all on the board of Shamrock Home Loans. You talk about peer-to-peer refinement and tremendous content. We spend 1 of our 20 work days all day with our C12 members and colleagues. It’s been such a blessing in my life since October 2014. Thanks for having me here.
You raised a good point because when you surround yourself with business owners or CEOs of other companies, you’re not just getting your perspective from Lenders One. That’s where we originally met. I’d forgotten that. I’m so glad that you reminded me of that. Shout-out to Lenders One, Mortgage Collaborative, and all these groups where we get together as an industry. When you get perspective outside of our industry, we have CEOs looking at the mortgage industry. They cause us to broaden our focus as we go back and look at it. There’s such a benefit to that.
Let me tell you a funny story from my first meeting. In October 2014, there was another guy at the table who was in his first meeting, Paul Marston of Abernathy Trucking. His business was fuel delivery to service stations throughout the Northeast. He had 114 trucks. There some new regulations had come which capped their speed and mileage requirements and they were having trouble getting drivers.
After this five-minute intro or less of who you are to show the rest of the group who you are, and again, there were ten others that had been together for a while, Paul and I were new to that particular table. Everybody gets to speak for a minute in a lightning round of what they’d like to say. I go through where I am in 2014 in the mortgage industry and Paul has to speak, even though he is a new member and he’s going clockwise around the table. He says, “My advice to you is could you please stop saying can’t, shouldn’t, won’t, and all the negativity you dumped on this table?”
I’ve never even met this guy. He said, “I’m in the fuel delivery business. You have no idea how difficult things can be.” One of the great things about being in a group that is from different industries is there are times you say, “I’m so glad I don’t do that for a living.” Now, I’m that guy at the table. I’m so glad I don’t lend mortgages for a living. Paul has become one of my best friends. He’s a C12 chair now. He sold his business and became a chairman in C12. He’s one of the great encourages in my life. He was at that talk as well in Denver.
I would love to meet this incredible guy. I can’t wait to meet him. I love these kinds of stories. For those that don’t know you, you’re well-known in the Northeast. In fact, I got to give you a shout-out. I was mentioning to Emily Farley, who I have the honor and privilege of being her executive coach. I said, “I met Dean Harrington of Shamrock Mortgage.” She went on and she goes, “I love that company. If there’s ever been a company that closely aligns with our values and what we are, it would be Shamrock Home Loans. I’ve met Dean. I’d love to reconnect.” Hopefully, you and Emily have connected again. You are well respected in the Northeast. Tell us a little bit about your journey to where you’re at now, Dean.
I started Shamrock Home Loan in 1989. I became a lender in 2001 and then steadily progressed from that point. I pretty much stayed in our backyard, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. I grew a little bit into some other states that were convenient for our New England borrowers, mainly places like Florida. Some of those second-home destinations have done well most of the years. As you mentioned at the top, we were named in 2023 as the number one company to work for in the mortgage industry by National Mortgage News. We had been number two in years 4 and 5 in 2020.
I’m blessed to do what I do. I’ve got a great senior leadership team that’s been with me forever and ever. In 2022, we added Kurt Noyce who had retired and embrace home loans. I know a lot of people know Kurt. Talk about a dream team putting together. We’re in the same market everybody is in now. We are 70% off in the total market and 40% off in revenue per loan. We’re trying to become better through this storm, which we’ve all seen happen. If you can get through a storm like this, a winter season, or time in the desert, whichever analogy you want to prefer, you come out of it so much better. I’m looking forward to seeing what God has on the other end of this at this point. That’s pretty much who we are.
Shamrock Home Loans: If you can get through a storm like this, a winter season time in the desert, you come out of it so much better.One of the reasons you have achieved the honor of being the number one mortgage company to work for by National Mortgage News was because of what you presented in your breakout session in Denver at the C12 Annual Conference. I want to get into that and share that. I’m going to have you as well as you can. I’ll interject and get some comments going, but I would to have you share with our audience what you shared there and why it is so important to you being named the number one mortgage company in the US.
I appreciate that question, David, because it’s one I need very little preparation for because, as the CEO, I’m the chief reminding officer. More than anything else, I have to remind people of who we are and what we do. As I spin through this, some in your audience will hear the EOS platform. I mentioned some that know Donald Miller and StoryBrand will know that a little bit, Tim Pollard, The Compelling Communicator, and Mike Shero at C12. These are all people that have helped pour into me over the years and come up with what I define as the most important aspect of building a business. That is the people. We all talk about culture, but culture ultimately is your brand, and your brand and your culture are determined by the core values you have.
It is not aspirational core values like, “We’re about integrity, trust, and honesty.” In this industry, you’ve got to have those things. You can’t play the game with that. It’s a set of core values that you build around people that you admire. You think about who are the people that you’ve admired and worked with in your company over the years. You look at the attributes that you admire and you say, “What are these things that I admire about them?” You’ll usually come up with 3, 4, 5, or 6. If you do this with your leadership team, you’ll probably put 30 or 40 words up on a board of things that you admire about people.
Some, you’ll quickly dismiss that. I admire their sense of humor or their athletic ability. You might throw those out. If ultimately you come down to 5, 6, 7, there resonate on every single list. They’re there for every single person. You then take those and look back at your leadership team and say, especially you as a CEO, “Do I represent these?” Eventually, you’ll get down to 3, 4, or 5, maybe 6 or 7 at the highest end. You’ve got to word them in ways that you can review employees on them. I’ll give you an example. One of our core values is consistent daily demeanor.
We define that as “Be someone that’s approachable.” You might think, “Why do the two have to go together?” We all know that if you’ve worked with someone that’s a different person every day, the net effect is you don’t approach them because you don’t know which version of them is showing up in the conversation. For us to come together as a group of people, a consistent daily demeanor is critically important. You can be an introvert, an ambivert, or an extrovert and you can be a six on the scale of excitement level or a ten, but be reasonably the same every day because I got to know who I’m coaching when you show up. We review our employees and our staff on that twice a year. We have five core values. We pretty much use a plus-minus and minus system.
It’s what you’d expect plus as you’re like that. Most of the time, plus-minus, sometimes yes, sometimes no, minus you’re not. A bar of tolerance is four pluses and one plus-minus. We don’t wait for those reviews if somebody falls off the scale on one of those. We sit down and review them. The reason this is so important is this is the reason you want to build a company that somebody names the best company to work for. You’ve got to be willing to understand that the core values are what you expect of one another.
You identified what is expected, but it’s your company’s identity. If there’s anything that can be pointed to, people should be talking about this, whether you have the name hanging on their wall and they memorized them or saw them or not, this should be the thing that is the most evident in the marketplace about your company.
Certainly, in the marketplace relative to recruiting and retention. We do share it with our referral partners. The borrowers don’t need to know this because we have a different message for them. We do not put them on the wall or put them on placards because if they are, how real are they? If you’re going to get reviewed on it, every single employee in our company knows the five core values because they’ve had to sit there and be reviewed on them. If they get a plus-minus on something or two plus-minuses, we say, “We need a corrective measure in heart for people,” which is another one of our core values. We define it as the ability to listen and the willingness to share, an interdependence.
We found that that’s the most successful people in our organization over the years. That’s why we pick it. We don’t pick it because we like it or we think it’s fancy. I got to tell you, we’ve had some tough moments over the years, and one of them was not so long ago. We’ve had to terminate somebody for core value violations when they were good producers. I almost hate to say this out loud. Three times we’ve terminated our number one salesperson over core values because it’s what we expect of one another.
[bctt tweet="The ability to listen and the willingness to share an interdependence make the most successful people." via="no"]
What I would encourage the audience that has any role in hiring or retaining people is every time you bring somebody into your organization or you review somebody, I want you to envision every single employee standing outside your door looking in the windows on your wall if you have windows or in your door and they’re saying, “Don’t let that person in if they don’t fit,” we’re not perfect at it. This is what works here. When you interview people, that’s when you turn around and say, “These are our five core values. I’ve got some questions to dig out whether you fit this. I’m going to call some of your references.” Ultimately, I’m not going to know what I got until it’s here. Anybody that does hiring knows that. When you get here, if you’re not this person, don’t take the job.
You’ve mentioned a couple of them already, but so our audience knows, they’re probably curious like I am. I know what they are and what you’ve said before, but what are your five core values? Run through those.
Consistent daily demeanor and heart for people, I’ve already laid it out. Resourcefulness is another one. We don’t stack these. We put them in a circle. None is more important than the other. This is weird. You’ve never heard this before, I would bet. We define resourcefulness as, “Be able to defend the work you’ve done before involving or looking for the input of somebody else.”
Shamrock Home Loans: Resourcefulness is to be able to defend the work you've done before involving the time of somebody else.Give us some examples around that.
I’d love to. You probably heard me say this in my talk in Denver. We have a history and example of value, an anti-value, and an analogy. I’m going to spare all those, but here’s the one I would use in this. It’s like, “I’m a pre-processor. I’m coming up the line. I’m going to be a processor in another six months. I’m walking through it.” I decide because I’m walking by the president’s office and say, “I don’t know the loan to value write down on a rural property in Massachusetts. Let me go ask him.” Rod Correia, our president, and former Major League baseball player is going to look at you and say, “Did you look it up in the HUD guidebook?”
“That thing has got 1,000 pages.” “Did you Google it?” “That’s the internet. You can’t trust the internet.” “Did you ask another pre-process sitting next to you?” “They’re all on the phone.” You get the drill. You got to be able to say we want to help people. We established ourselves for a lot of years by hiring outside the industry and teaching people about the business. That’s most of our DNA. You can imagine that resourcefulness is important because if you come in and you’re setting everybody on fire by asking a million questions, it doesn’t work. That’s resourcefulness. That’s an important one.
Positive influence is another one. We do not call it positive attitude. Positive influence is being able to improve the performance of those around you. That’s critically important. That one is interesting because we used to call it 1s, 2s, and 3s. Ones improve the performance of others around them. Twos have a net no impact, and threes have a drag on other people. We used to say, “As a loan officer, you could be in a 1 and a 2. As a non-loan officer, you can only be a one.” We’ve stuck with that.
The last one is important. It’s the one that we find in the beginning is the hardest one. This one trips people up and gets them gone faster than the others. It is intellectual curiosity. We want people that are interested in why something is because when you’re interested in why, you will absorb the information, retain it, and be able to dispense it to others. We had a termination not long ago and they kept asking the same questions over and over. You’d say, “Why do you think we need that?” They said, “It’s one of the guidelines. Why do you think it’s material to a credit decision?” “I don’t think about credit decisions.” “I’m going to help you out. You can actually leave here and go to a career that doesn’t have credit decisions.” We say it more nicely than that, but that’s our core values.
What’s clear is you set clear boundaries for what works inside of your company. You’re not saying that this is the end all be all core values for the industry, but to work at Shamrock Home Loans, these are our core values. If you operate well within this, you’ll live well. I would imagine that creates a sense of safety and protection for those that are there that do subscribe to these. It’s got to have a holding power or staying power where people are not going to get recruited away to another company that might have a better compensation plan because those values have been so ingrained into them. Talk a little bit about this. How do core values hold people in the right way to your organization?
This is a great question. We all know that you want to get the right people on the bus. If you have the right core values, we’ll move your seat on the bus. You don’t miss that. We’ve done it numerous times. We took somebody who was reasonably gifted in marketing. We put them in our processing program and they became our processing manager within three years. It’s an incredible rapid ascension. Why? Because they fit the core values and they weren’t working out in marketing and as creative as we wanted them to be. Rather than get rid of them, we said, “This is a core value fit. Let’s move the seat on the bus.”
That is important because a lot of people hired job skills rather than core values. You have that as their number one priority. When you find someone that identifies and aligns with your core values, you’re going to make that work. It doesn’t mean it always works out, but you’re going to do everything you can to make that fit well in another seat because it’s so hard to find those core values, someone that aligns with them.
Let me shift slightly to the reason that they stay. The reason that they stay is a little bit different. That’s the core purpose. Some will call that mission statement. If you get your core purpose right, which we didn’t for many years, I kept switching it. It was awful at times. I got to have a mission statement so I’d have one. My list of roadkill mission statements would fill a volume. They were terrible. We finally got it right because I met a guy named Donald Miller of StoryBrand. We went to Tennessee and met with him. I had him work on it with me. Ultimately, people stay because the core purpose is strong enough for them not to hit the snooze button. Is your core purpose strong enough not to hit the snooze button?
The core purpose is why you come to work every day. That’s what will keep people here if they believe in the core purpose. Simon Sinek has that great saying of people don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it. This was a breakthrough for me. I would highly recommend his Business Made Simple platform and cheap subscription. He could take you through this. Every single core purpose is a movie, screenplay, or book. It’s got a conflict, resolution, and happy ending. We got this right back in ‘16 or ‘17 within the C12 world. I started doing this for other C12 companies. You heard me share a bunch of them in my talk in Denver. What was the conflict in our industry that Shamrock was solving?
I love that I’m talking to my industry now because you’ll all resonate with this. People deserve to live in a home they love, but they don’t know how to make that dream a reality. That’s the conflict. They don’t deserve to live in a home. We tried that. Remember in ‘06, ‘07, and ‘05, that doesn’t work. When somebody falls in love with a home and they can’t have it, it breaks my heart. If your mission statement breaks your heart, it’s the right mission statement. It’s so critical.
I want to settle in on that for a minute because you hit on something there that resonated with my heart. Say that again. There was a profound statement there.
If your core purpose breaks your heart, it’s going to have legs through your company nothing else. Your core purpose as the owner should break your heart. It doesn’t have to break everybody else’s, but if it breaks your heart, it’s going to run through. Andy Stanley teaches a little bit in the Christian world. I know him a little bit. He’s a good business teacher, I’ll say that. He said years ago, “It’s 1 of 2 things. It’s what breaks your heart, or what is considered impossible in our industry that when somebody figures it out, it’s going to be a game changer.”
[bctt tweet="If your core purpose breaks your heart, it's going to have legs through your company like nothing else." via="no"]
That second one is a hard question. I went with what broke my heart. What breaks my heart is when family comes in here and they fall in love with this house. Their offer got accepted, and I don’t want that dream to be dashed. I want it to come true. Our conflict is everyone deserves to live in a home they love but they don’t know how to make that dream a reality. What we do at Shamrock Home Loans is we’ve built a mortgage application process that’s accessible to the ready, the almost ready, and the someday ready. That’s the middle part of the movie. The happy ending is that everyone gets to go home to a place they love. When I spin all that out, and you go tell somebody what that story was with that movie is, whatever the answer as to what it’s about is your core purpose.
For us, the movie was about, “Everyone deserves to live in a home they love.” Every single person at Shamrock comes to work for the same reason. That is because everyone deserves to live in a home they love. If you can make that core purpose an injustice by throwing the word deserves, I don’t want to get crazy with that. We don’t want a trophy for everybody. It will put it on hyperpower. That’s what keeps people coming to work. That keeps them not hitting the snooze button. We’re here because everyone deserves to live in a home they love. That is also a resource filter.
We have two resources in business, time and money. It empowers your staff to be able to say, “Do I spend time and money on this?” “Does it answer everyone deserves to live at a home they love?” If they’re looking on an investor loan where a guy owns eight properties and he wants to flip this one quick or whatever, we don’t want to dismiss that potential loan. It’s not in the middle of the bell curve. It’s not the reason we’re here. It’s something else. It’s a resource filter when it’s done right.
You talked for an hour. I hung in every word you said when you were giving that. I go on, “I wish I could broadcast this out to the entire industry.” As I’m sitting here listening to you speak at the C12 Conference, one of the things you did is you went through some principles on how people can establish what their core principles should be.
What you want to do is you want to get your leadership team together in a room. You want to have all of them identify an individual in their mind that nails it. It’s good if it’s a current employee, but it can be a past employee.
You’re talking about finding an individual that best embodies what you liked and you started identifying what the values are to that person. Is that correct?
It’s what you admire about them. You ask yourself. If we could hire 100, fill in the blank like Mary Johnson’s we could hire 100. We’d only need 50 of them. That’s how good they are. Everybody comes up with that name. You don’t even have to write the name down for your colleagues. Write down what you admire about that person. When we finish the first iteration of this in 16, we have 54 admirable characteristics on the board that we played, keep, kill, and combined. When somebody has integrity and honesty, that’s the same thing. Trust and honesty are the same thing. We get down to about fifteen, then we took out the ones that we would call pay to play that you have to have these to open your doors integrity, honesty, trust.
We have everybody’s financial information. We can’t have that as a core value. I’ve seen some people put a core value of faith on there. I’m someone that believes this is God’s company. One of my core values is not faith because what am I going to do with somebody that doesn’t have faith? Am I not going to hire them? Of course not. You’re going to throw out some that don’t fit for 1 or 2 reasons. Somebody has got to sit there and say, “Are any of these aspirational? We like them so much. We’ve got them in there, but they’re not evidenced in anybody we’ve ever seen.”
I want to make sure that our audience understands. That was a point you made in Denver. I thought it was good. When you say aspirational, what do you mean specifically?
I might have a core value of being able to absorb complex details very quickly. I put that in there and I got better wording for it, but it’s a core value. It’s aspirational because there’s a whole bunch of people that excel here without a 60-second brain. They take a little time to process information. That’s okay. Aspirational is this sounds good and it will sound good in recruiting and speeches, but it’s not who we are. It’s not on any list of anybody I wrote down that I admire.
Aspirational is something you would aspire to achieve.
David, it’s rare that you come up with it in your stuff. What isn’t rare is ones that are pay-to-play. We have to have this anyway. You can’t have that as a core value or ones that are restrictive. I fight this with some of my C12 companies. A core value of all scripture is true and breathed by the Holy Spirit through God. You can’t have that as a core value. What do you do? Do not hire somebody that doesn’t agree with that? You can’t do that.
Let’s continue inspiring people to create core values that will help them attract and hold people.
We haven’t talked about our clients and our customers. That’s a how question. How do we do our job? EOS teaches you and I can’t suggest this enough. The answer to that is an answer to a question. When we’ve done our best work, what do we do? We’re in the mortgage industry. Some people are going to say, “We’ve got them a good interest rate. We got them closed on time.” That’s not your best work. Good grief, you’re out of business if that’s the best work you can do. We identified this years ago. When we’ve done our best work, we’ve kept the client excited from contract to keys. We’d like to say we’ve kept the contract to key.
Shamrock Home Loans: Keep the client excited from contract to keys.In other words, all the way through the whole process.
We look at it this way. This is interesting. We had a thought exercise earlier in 2023. Who’s responsible for the contract to keys? We have loan offices, LOAs, and then processing people. We built a model years ago that everybody has a piece in that contract to key’s solution, keeping them excited and not afraid. As we’ve seen a downshift in the industry, a 70% reduction in the potential market, and available market inventory problems here in the Northeast are pretty substantial, we began to look at who was responsible and who can expedite this the most efficiently. We decided to take the approach that we can’t lean on the loan officer for the contract to keys experience.
They have delivered the business into the building. We, as a company, have to own the contract to keys experience. They’re responsible for getting the prospect to our door but then we’ve got to own it. We’ve said the LOA can’t even own it because it’s still on that origination side. We’ve changed it from processors to mortgage operations officers, which have two skillsets. David, you and I both come from somewhat of a church background, so somebody has to bear with this analogy, but it’s so perfect I can’t not use it.
There are two types of pastors that you can go to church and see on Sunday. There’s the pastor that’s a good teacher and compelling speaker, and then there’s the one that can run a great organization because many churches are big organizations. It’s rare that person is the same person. We’ve been around the church world for a long time. When you find that person that’s both, that’s what I call a black swan. Our mortgage operations officers that we build are that person. They have the contract to key’s ability to expedite turn times ahead of expectations but also communicate to borrowers and clients in a way that extinguishes fear. That’s rare.
That’s such an important part. There’s so much fear pent up in this overall contract-to-keys process because this is the most important transaction in people’s lives. We’ve got to get that eliminated to this to the degree that we do. I would love to dive into that.
You’ve heard me say this. Look what we do. It’s so fascinating. When you apply for a mortgage in our industry, and I’m talking to everybody in our industry, it’s a reprove or reject resolution. Think about this in the rest of the world. You go to a restaurant and you are 75 pounds overweight. You order the blooming onion at 4,000 calories. The looks of a waitress that says, “I’m not putting that order in. It’s not for you.” I grew up as a redhead so I go to buy a shirt and go into Express Men. I pull out this red shirt and I come out of the dressing room to see if it fits. The clerk is there ready to take it off me saying, “You have red hair. You are not buying that red shirt.” Reject it.
Take that to people from anywhere between 15 and 40 days depending on the contract time. That’s what our industry is. We have to know any objection they have or any fighting back. If the reason you’re getting the sixth call in the day isn’t that they didn’t hear or they don’t understand, they’re afraid. When they tell you they don’t want to document it, they’re afraid. When they don’t return your call three days in a row, it’s because they’re afraid all the time. You better know that within your communication protocols and the people that are dealing with them all the time. That’s controllable as an owner.
I’d love so many things you’re saying here. I am so excited about sharing this with our audience. I want to give people a window into your mind and how you run your company because there are so many things that are there that have made you number one in 2023 by National Mortgage News. Tell us one of the things you did where you set up some things during COVID that were significant with your staff. If you could talk briefly about that because it’s a principle again that has carried over all the way into where we’re at now.
Now that we’re a few years removed from March ‘20, I can say this without fears of arrest or reprisal. I am in a very blue state here. I don’t want to be political with anybody. Here’s what happened. We’re getting locked down like everybody else does in March of 2020. We have down to five employees in the building. Everybody has gone home. We were ready for it. For some reason, we had all sorts of remote stations ready to go. God was providential with us there. We sent everybody home and all the kids are home.
Rod Correia, the President of the company, says, “We got a problem. What are we going to do to keep our moms out of,” and he used the name of a hospital here in Rhode Island for mentally distressed people. I will not go any further than that. We said, “What are we going to do to keep them from trying to work when we’re very busy with their kids at home, getting online?” The first thing we did is said, “We’ll send them dinner every night.” We did this big delivery of dinner to our underwriters and processors. We said, “That’s one thing off the table.” We thought about, “Maybe we could send cleaners,” and then Rod had the brilliant idea.
He said, “No. We got to send them college kids to the house to tutor their kids and watch them while they’re on Zoom.” About three months later, we did what you’re not supposed to do. We took an entire empty area of our office and built 35 works stations. The kids came to work every day and so did the college kids. That continued for eighteen months. We eventually got people who talked about this in their friend group that said, “My next-door neighbor has this problem. Can we help?” He said, “Yes. Send that kid in. We’ll take as many kids as we can.”
However, I got a call from a local news station from a woman saying, “I heard what you’re doing. I’m a reporter at channel number. I’d like to send my kid in and I pay you whatever.” I said, “You wouldn’t have to pay me. Number two, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I was so petrified that this would get out and then I’d go out in handcuffs. We continued out. We had a graduation at the end of year two. We had a field day.
Rod Correia’s brother is a math genius. He would come in every fourth Friday with the middle schoolers and tutor them ahead to high school math. We would give them little functions in the company that they could do once they get old enough. I love children. For me to hang around with kids and check on them down there was a magical time. That’s when we broke into the top 100 but couldn’t tell anybody why we got so much positive feedback from my staff.
It’s embracing a problem and looking at it from the employee’s standpoint. It was, “What can we do to enrich their lives so they can enrich our business rather than putting it all on them?” That’s outstanding. You bring up your faith. There are many people with varying faces in the industry. We are trying to be so PC, Politically Correct, all the time. People struggle with this. I’d love to hear the principle or how you navigate this. How do you navigate your faith at work?
I appreciate that question because I don’t want to be a secret agent about this. Again, I don’t want anybody to feel judged or fearful. Let me take it to you this way. When someone comes to Shamrock and they’re going to work here, I give them this little two-minute speech, which I’ll run by you now and probably a little bit less than that. I used to not do this and it got me bit once because I will talk about God. We have a prayer meeting that’s optional for anybody. Even the email didn’t announce the prayer meeting you have to opt into.
I don’t want to unrest anybody. I sit down and I tell them, “I got to tell you this. I am the Jesus freak in the corner office. That’s who I am. Now I’m going to tell you why that’s good for you. There are two reasons it’s good for you. First I want to tell you what it doesn’t mean. I will not hire, fire, promote, demote, pay more, or pay less to anybody based on if they agree with my faith or not. In Shamrock, probably 85% of the people are not believers in Jesus. Ask them if they’ve been mistreated, treated poorly, given any demotion, or not paid enough. I treat them all the same. I’m going to dismiss it now. It’s not going to harm your career here.”
Now I’ll tell you two reasons why it’s a straight-out benefit. 1 of the 2 is the two things that I’m called to as somebody that is a Christian. I’m called to love my God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength, and I’m called to love my neighbor. I’m going to take the second one first. I’ve looked and searched the Bible. I’ve got to love my neighbor. I’ve tried to find a qualifier. I love my neighbor that thinks like me, looks like me, loves the patriots, and fill in the blanks. There’s no qualifier, and it’s love the action. When we did what we did with the school, that was a love for my staff and their families.
That’s a good thing for you. You want someone that loves you. The second reason is probably even more powerful and not talked about. I have to love God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength means I can only have one God. I can’t have the others. You’ve worked for people that have others. I can’t have the God of pride, being right, never being wrong, lust, and greed. I struggle with those because I’m a failed man and a sinful man like every other creature on this Earth, but you won’t have to work for somebody that serves another one of those dangerous gods. Those gods aren’t good for you to work for. I said that’s it. You’ll have to hear me say a God story now and again, use a biblical analogy, but I will not judge you. I’ll not put this upon you.
What you’re speaking to is, “I want to be authentic and I want you not to be in fear.” The other thing we were talking about employees is they are in fear. They don’t call for those reasons. Employees don’t raise this up. You’ve created an environment where it’s working. Being named the number one mortgage company by National Mortgage News in 2023, it’s working. Anyone who has a strong faith, they’d like to have everyone understand that because of the benefits that brings. The most important thing here is that do not be afraid of those that do have faith or don’t. Speak out. What are the guiding principles by which you run your business? What are the foundational values? I’m thrilled that you’ve helped us to get into that. Dean, we got to have you back. We scratched the surface barely on so many good topics that need to be shared with our industry. I’m grateful to have gotten to know you. I’m only bummed that has taken me. I’m in the industry for decades, and I’m now getting to know you. This is why I want to stay and continue to influence this business because I want to find guys like you and share their message and story. You’ve been inspiring me since I met you. Hopefully, our audience got inspired by what they read. Any final words you want to share with our audience?
First, it’s a blessing to be here. My final words would be words of encouragement to those that are in the industry that are struggling. I know that if you’re an employee in this industry, it’s trauma now for you. It’s nervous. You’re anxious all the time. I know if you’re an owner, you’re in the same boat. I would encourage you all to be hopeful that on the other side of this, we’ll all be redeemed and have a better industry for having gone through this and everyone will be okay. Not everybody will still be here, but everyone will be okay. For anybody who wants to reach out to me, I do a huddle a couple of times a week at TheShamrockHuddle.com where I try to be as encouraging as I can. You can find me on LinkedIn.
Wouldn’t you talk briefly about that? You mentioned that on some of the shows that you sent beforehand. I didn’t get to that. Is this open to the industry? Is it open to anybody who will join in?
I have a small audience. I probably have 8,000 subscribers. I do two videos at one minute each week. I’ve done it for a decade plus at TheShamrockHuddle.com. I’m not talking about the mortgage industry all the time. In fact, I do it on Tuesday and Friday. My Tuesday message was about something you should not say to your children if you’re a parent.
I’ll tease it up. Do you know what it is? “When I was your age.” You should never say that. I’ll let you go watch the video as to why you shouldn’t say that. I want to be a light and an encourager in the industry. I’m blessed to be able to do that. I’m easy to reach. I’m willing to go over anybody that’s got core value challenges, core purpose challenges, and vision for the future, which we didn’t get a chance to get into too much. I’m available. I’ll help wherever I can.
It’s encouraging. I’ve enjoyed our time together here. I can see why Emily Farley and so many at Atlantic Bay respect you and your leadership so well. Casey Crawford is another one of those guys, a real industry icon leader in the industry respects you so much. Thanks so much for being here, Dean. What a blessing.
I don’t deserve but I appreciate it.
We’re going to have you back. You can count on it.
I’ll hold you to that. Thanks, David.
Dean Harrington is the founder and CEO of Shamrock Home Loans. In 2023, Shamrock was named the #1 mortgage company to work for by National Mortgage News. Dean has been recognized by Banker & Tradesman as one of the 12 most influential people in mortgage banking and by C12 Business Forums as member of the year and National Hero Award winner. He is also a past president of the Rhode Island Mortgage Bankers Association. Shamrock started in 1989 and operates in fifteen states with 100+ employees.
Dean is married and has four children and two grandchildren.
Let me tell you a funny story from my first meeting. In October 2014, there was another guy at the table who was in his first meeting, Paul Marston of Abernathy Trucking. His business was fuel delivery to service stations throughout the Northeast. He had 114 trucks. There some new regulations had come which capped their speed and mileage requirements and they were having trouble getting drivers.
After this five-minute intro or less of who you are to show the rest of the group who you are, and again, there were ten others that had been together for a while, Paul and I were new to that particular table. Everybody gets to speak for a minute in a lightning round of what they’d like to say. I go through where I am in 2014 in the mortgage industry and Paul has to speak, even though he is a new member and he’s going clockwise around the table. He says, “My advice to you is could you please stop saying can’t, shouldn’t, won’t, and all the negativity you dumped on this table?”
I’ve never even met this guy. He said, “I’m in the fuel delivery business. You have no idea how difficult things can be.” One of the great things about being in a group that is from different industries is there are times you say, “I’m so glad I don’t do that for a living.” Now, I’m that guy at the table. I’m so glad I don’t lend mortgages for a living. Paul has become one of my best friends. He’s a C12 chair now. He sold his business and became a chairman in C12. He’s one of the great encourages in my life. He was at that talk as well in Denver.
I would love to meet this incredible guy. I can’t wait to meet him. I love these kinds of stories. For those that don’t know you, you’re well-known in the Northeast. In fact, I got to give you a shout-out. I was mentioning to Emily Farley, who I have the honor and privilege of being her executive coach. I said, “I met Dean Harrington of Shamrock Mortgage.” She went on and she goes, “I love that company. If there’s ever been a company that closely aligns with our values and what we are, it would be Shamrock Home Loans. I’ve met Dean. I’d love to reconnect.” Hopefully, you and Emily have connected again. You are well respected in the Northeast. Tell us a little bit about your journey to where you’re at now, Dean.
I started Shamrock Home Loan in 1989. I became a lender in 2001 and then steadily progressed from that point. I pretty much stayed in our backyard, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. I grew a little bit into some other states that were convenient for our New England borrowers, mainly places like Florida. Some of those second-home destinations have done well most of the years. As you mentioned at the top, we were named in 2023 as the number one company to work for in the mortgage industry by National Mortgage News. We had been number two in years 4 and 5 in 2020.
I’m blessed to do what I do. I’ve got a great senior leadership team that’s been with me forever and ever. In 2022, we added Kurt Noyce who had retired and embrace home loans. I know a lot of people know Kurt. Talk about a dream team putting together. We’re in the same market everybody is in now. We are 70% off in the total market and 40% off in revenue per loan. We’re trying to become better through this storm, which we’ve all seen happen. If you can get through a storm like this, a winter season, or time in the desert, whichever analogy you want to prefer, you come out of it so much better. I’m looking forward to seeing what God has on the other end of this at this point. That’s pretty much who we are.
Dean Harrington is the founder and CEO of Shamrock Home Loans. In 2023, Shamrock was named the #1 mortgage company to work for by National Mortgage News. Dean has been recognized by Banker & Tradesman as one of the 12 most influential people in mortgage banking and by C12 Business Forums as member of the year and National Hero Award winner. He is also a past president of the Rhode Island Mortgage Bankers Association. Shamrock started in 1989 and operates in fifteen states with 100+ employees.
Dean is married and has four children and two grandchildren.