Lykken on Lending

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Emily Farley, Chief Lending Officer at Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group

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The Importance Of “Work-Life” Balance In Today’s Remote Work With Emily Farley

It’s good to have you here for another episode. It’s Monday, June 7th, 2021. We give the date for those that are reading on a downloaded basis. You can stay up to date on all that’s going on. We got some people dialing in, the old-fashioned style of using the phone. I’m so excited. I don’t know about your area, but we are getting some serious amount of rain here in Texas.

I’m thinking of our friends in California and how badly they need it. We have the Governor of Utah saying, “I don’t care what your faith is. Start praying for rain.” You know it’s bad in certain parts where certain governors are praying that it starts raining, and we are very soon here in Texas praying it stops raining. I haven’t got any much flooding, but we will receive all the rain we can get. We love it as long as it doesn’t flood.

I don’t know if you guys knew this, but a couple of episodes ago, we had a thunderstorm roll in overhead. I got knocked out. We lost internet, we lost computer, we lost power, and we lost everything right in the middle of the show in the middle of the Hot Topic segment as we were kicking it off. I don’t think you guys recognized it, but it’s one of those things.

Doing these episodes is so much fun, but we are so glad to have you as our reader here and we get to share another exciting episode. This show was created by mortgage professionals. It is for mortgage professionals. We are delighted to have you here as our reader. Our commitment is to bring you timely information in a blog format that you can read anytime and anywhere.

This Hot Topic is near and dear to my heart. We are going to be talking with Emily Farley, Chief Lending Officer of Atlantic Bay Mortgage. We are going to be talking about the importance of work-life balance in this remote work environment. A lot of people are struggling, “I wear the lines. I used to leave and go to work and then I come home. I’m with my family and there are good boundaries on that. Now it’s all blurred and how are we doing it?” Atlantic Bay has been named the best large mortgage company to work for in the nation. We are thrilled to have Emily Farley come on and talk about how they are working through the work-life balance. We will be doing that in the Hot Topic segment.

I want to say a special thank you to our friends over at Industry Syndicate. We are proud to be affiliated with IndustrySyndicate.com. It’s a great place for you to pick up and listen to other podcasts that are out there. It’s a lot of great podcasts. We are thrilled that we have inspired so many to come on and start doing this.

It was Dave Savage and I were the first ones out there. It was Dave Savage of Mortgage Coach, my dear friend. It’s great to be out there early with something that has taken off. I want to let you know that if there’s anyone out there with an underwriter who’s looking for employment or if you are having to lay one off, I have a client, Michael DiClemente in Watson Mortgage in Florida, in the Jacksonville area who is looking for underwriters. If you know of anybody, please get ahold of me and/or get ahold of Michael DiClemente, President of Watson Mortgage.

I want to give a shout-out to Black Knight. They are putting on and hosting the Hedging 101 Benefits of Delivering Loans on a Mandatory Basis. It’s a webinar. A lot of people, especially loan officers, do not understand the concept of hedging and how that works. They do or some think they do. It doesn’t matter. Have everyone dial in and read this. It’s the benefits of it. Hedging 101 caught my attention.

I know hedging. I have done it and all the companies I have owned have done it, but it’s good to get a refresher course. Check out Hedging 101 Benefits of Delivering Loans on a Mandatory Basis webinar that Black Knight is putting on. I want to say a special thank you to Mortgage Bankers Association of America, Michael Fratantoni for giving us the economic forecast. I got to get him back on and figure out what’s going on with economics here.

When you are at the Mortgage Bankers Association of America website, MBA.org, you should get signed up for the Mortgage Action Alliance. It is a very powerful way of having your voice heard on the hill. Most of the time, we are in step with the NRA, National Association of REALTORS. We need to make sure that we are in step with them, but we are different. We need to make sure we have our voices heard as well.

Also, the Lenders One is a great co-op along with The Mortgage Collaborative. These two co-ops do a great job of allowing you to get up close and personal with your peers. Find out what others are doing to solve the problems of their day. Check out both these cooperatives. Also, the Community Mortgage Lenders of America, another association that does a great job helping independent mortgage lenders.

Indecomm has some solutions for every stage of the mortgage life cycle including automation, outsourcing, and compliance. I’m fixated on the bots that they create. They have some great technology. Check it out. Also, Insellerate. We got Josh Friend teed up to be a guest coming up here. Josh has got a great company that helps with the leading-edge technology and mortgage expertise for pre-design campaigns, marketing campaigns, and sales campaigns that help empower engagement. Check out Insellerate.com.

The Knowledge Coop does a great job of helping deliver training through its Learning Management System, their LMS system. They do a great job so check out Knowledge Coop, as well as Mobility MMI and Modex. I’m so grateful for both of these companies. Ben Teerlink in Mobility MMI, Mortgage Market Intelligence as well as Dale Larson over at Modex, both of these companies do a great job of helping you find the right loan officers, selecting them, targeting them, and going after them.

I keep talking to my clients. “How are you sourcing your people? Are you impressed with the upper number or are you impressed with the bottom-line number?” Find out who’s doing business in your market as being successful. Use these two tools for great ability to market and find the right loan officers and also find the right realtors. I will let you check these both out. They will give you demonstrations by mentioning Lykken on Lending, so be sure to do that. I appreciate them.

I want to say a special thank you to Rob, Les, Allen, Alice, and Matt for their contributions every week. Welcome, everybody. We are now entering into the Hot Topic segment of the show and we are going to be talking with Emily Farley, Chief Lending Officer of Atlantic Bay Mortgage. We are going to be talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and something that Alice and I have talked about numerous times in our travels and talking about how to balance this work-life thing.

I’m sensitive to it because I was not sensitive to it when I was first married and I burned out a marriage because I didn’t have the right work-life balance. Fortunately, Nancy and I have been married for many years so I had a great mulligan there, but why do we have to go through that pain? We are going to learn about that now, so please welcome Emily Farley. Emily, it’s good to have you here.

Thank you. I’m so excited to be here. I have listened to you for years and feel like I know you and the rest of the team. I’m honored to be here.

We are honored to have you here. Congratulations to Atlantic Bay Mortgage for being the number one best large mortgage company to work at in the United States. That’s a pretty big honor.

It’s one of those that we are proud of. It’s one of those that comes because of your team members. We don’t have any control. There are a lot of these things you just put out there and you never know if people enter these contests, but our people speak and we are excited about it.

We are thrilled to have you on. I have known Atlantic Bay. I have done a great job building a great company and great competitors to many of our clients out there, and we are thrilled to have you here talking about one of the most important parts. If you have a great company to work at, you guys have some success or some game in managing work-life balance. Why is work-life balance such an important topic for the mortgage industry and for companies that are focusing on 2021 and how to be successful? Talk about that. What are you doing?

It’s funny because we talk about maybe we can achieve balance but if we can achieve integration like if you can integrate your work-life and your personal life. As you said with COVID, it got very blurred for a lot of people, especially in our industry as busy as it was ever last 2020. Even now with heading back to the office, you have to be aware of this topic. We talk about it a lot.

We work with highly driven people. Some have it figured out and some are still working on it. As leadership, I feel like it’s up to us to make sure we are always talking about it. We are helping our teams understand that it’s okay to have boundaries and it’s okay to step away. Our loan officers never want to lose a deal or have a realtor think they are not responding.

It's okay to have boundaries. It's okay to step away. If you don't have the boundary, it's going to take a toll. Click To Tweet

If you don’t have this boundary, it’s going to take such a toll. You don’t call your attorney or your accountant at 9:00 at night and expect them to call you back or you are going to fire them the next day. Our industry has put so much pressure on everyone for that instant response. As leaders, we have to help our teammates figure out how to communicate and have systems in place to make sure that we can try and have some of that integration.

I almost like that better than balance because when you look at COVID, our lives are truly integrated. It blurred. How can a work-life balance contribute to the success of a mortgage company? With you receiving the award that Atlantic Bay did, you guys seem to have some insights and figure this a little bit out.

It’s hard. Everyone knows all that now you are trying to hire good loan officers or you are going to hire great operations members. If you do, you need to keep them. You have to make sure that we can be productive as a company, but if they are happy and they feel like they have a company that understands that and they do have a life outside of this and it’s not just work, that’s what we try and preach. That comes from the top.

In 2020, technology helped, especially on the origination side. We have worked with our loan officers to make sure they have tools to have their clients digitally schedule time with them so they can block out their calendar and have time for different types of appointments, time for family time, time to work on stuff, and coaching around that time management. Sometimes in our industry, people think it is not possible that you are putting out fires every day. You can’t have that.

We have to work on that with our people. It’s cliché, but we call it a culture of support. We want people to go on vacation so they can turn themselves off, not be tied to their phones, to our managers, and work to make sure that they say, “Transfer your phone to me. Tell your agents that I will take care of you. You can go and have some time away.”

It’s one of our loan officers who was on maternity leave. She had a beautiful baby and had still one of their best months ever because the team jumped in. They were taking calls and making sure that she was taken care of so she could spend that time with her newborn. We have somebody going through cancer and the treatments are invasive. The team has to rally around that. I was having dinner with a loan officer and they are getting ready to get married. Their fiancée was like, “He cannot take his phone and laptop on our honeymoon.” We are like, “Exactly. You cannot do that.” You have a team of management there to support. That’s what’s important to retain and that your employees feel that no matter what they do with the company.

I love that, you can’t take your phone. That’s good basic marriage advice. Get him off with the right foot. That’s so true. Alice, you and I talk about this all the time. It’s been one of our favorite topics that you and I talk about, which is work-life balance. You have done a great job, and I know Union Home pushes this as well. What questions do you have for our guest?

I love what you were describing, Emily. It is a lot about setting an example as well. They see senior leadership at their desk all the time, always doing emails, and sending emails on weekends, but a lot of it is there. I know one of the things that I wanted to ask you about was, by continuing to allow remote work in 2021, how is that affecting work-life. Especially, when I think of the parents who have kids at home. Everybody had to adjust, and now we are looking at coming back to work. I’d love your thoughts on the remote work option.

The neat part about our company is that our operations team has been remote for years. It had it down. It helped us as a company be able to get great talent across the country, not just in our footprint. They tried to do things like sending them food, playing games, and integrating them into our culture when they were remote, but it was hard.

That’s a lot of what we have talked about as a company over the last few months. Some people want to go back. Some people, like you said, with childcare issues maybe can’t or don’t want to that they have their groove, and it’s fine. We have some great programs and we respect that to make sure that they still have that balance even if they decide not to come back. We are fine with that.

We have something called AB Life. Each week, there are virtual workout classes, family activities, reading and learning for the kids, personal growth, mental health, or physical health, and different things to try and engage the rest of the household too. We have a great team member who used to be on the Food Network and an incredible baker.

You could do a cake pop with your family. Mine was an absolute disaster that I tried with my niece and nephew. With things like that, we finished for good, which was encouraging people during the day to get out, take a walk for a minute, walk the dog, and take a breath. Encouraging those things whether they are at the office or not is important.

You will see people walking around our building during the day, a little group of them. They take a break, go outside, and go for walks. That’s so important either remotely or back in the office. As you said, from a management viewpoint, we have to live it. We mandated vacation and non-working weekends for our operation staff a number of times and said, “No. You cannot work. We are not going to allow it. You have to step away.”

With our loan officers, we pay them to take a vacation every year. We give them $2,000 to $4,000 based on their production level and say, “You have to go somewhere, step away, and then transfer your phone to us and recharge if nothing else.” That’s important. To what you were saying, Alice, the nights and the weekends are one of the things that I’m trying to work on with the email.

Sometimes, we need that time to catch up, but I’m trying to delay my email to the next day during working hours. Even Outlook has a little function, and it reminds you of that just so they don’t even get that buzz on their phone and feel like they have to respond. Just because I’m choosing that time and it may work in my schedule better, I don’t want to force that on anybody else. That’s important.

It gives us insights into why you guys were listed as the number one best large mortgage company to work for in the nation. We got a text message from one of our readers. He says, “Thank you for having Emily on. I love these ideas. I’m forwarding this to all of the execs in my company. ‘Pay me to leave. I go on vacation and take away my phone.’ My wife will love this.” We love getting feedback from our readers. Let’s give some more insights into the secret sauce for this accomplishment and how it fits into your success.

We all know this. Success is your people. You can have great systems. You have to have good people, and that’s the heart of the core values of the company. Our core values are very simple. They are key things. We genuinely care. Under that, we put people first. We prioritize relationships. We work as a team and we are confidently humble. That’s internally and then how we deal with all of our industry professionals and everybody outside of our company.

That’s very important to this, especially with the balance and expecting that family time. Also, making sure we are inspiring their growth, which is what every company needs to do. Our third core value is you must have fun. We work in such a stressful business and there are so many deadlines. You have to have fun, but you can’t just say it. You have to live it. The management team has to live it. They can’t be the ones that are in the background saying, “Where were you for fifteen minutes? What were you doing when somebody had to step away?” We get a lot of feedback around that. One of the reasons our teammates voted for this is that we listened to that feedback.

 

I always tell people, “We can’t implement all of it. It may not be now and it may be five years from now, but give us that feedback,” even if it’s, “What’s in the vending machine,” and they don’t like that or they want some different snacks. We had a loan officer who was questioning one of the forms we had in our loan package. We investigate it. We realized it was redundant, so we were able to take that out and say, “We heard you. This was a pain point. Let’s make sure that we can get that out.”

We spent two and a half days in a leadership conference planning and strategizing for the second half of the year. It’s interesting that a lot of it was not around the numbers and the goals, but it was around the relationships and the support of our team members. How do we retain our amazing people? How do we become better leaders and coaches for those people? That creates an environment that people want to be in. It’s a big thing for us. Our operations and sales team work so closely together. It’s a team, not a confrontational blaming environment. That’s something that’s taken us many years that we are very proud of.

I want to give a shout-out to have created that culture. When you talk about the things you are doing, you focus on people and relationships. It helps so much. Kudos to hiring a team to get executives like Emily on board.

It’s awesome. Thank you. You have people across our company who would be in a meeting, and if time is up and he needs to be at one of the children’s sporting events or school events, it’d be like, “We are done.” One of our realtor partners recounts the first-time meeting, and that was it. It was like, “I’m sorry. This is a great meeting, but I have to go.”

You have to be able to have people that epitomize that across your company. Especially if there are a lot of people out there who are maybe in growth mode with their companies or you are building that next generation of leadership, it has to be those people that epitomize that. That was one of the fears that we had when growing. Can you take what you have from your main home office and duplicate that six states away and create that? Our team has done an amazing job with that.

Allen Pollack, you have been listening to the discussion. Any questions you want to ask our guest?

First, Emily, thanks for being here. It’s insightful. Technology folks are no different than mortgage operational folks. They get burned out. There’s an old saying that tech guys usually say that they can’t work more than X amount of hours sharing at the computer because the quality of their code won’t be as good or something funny like that. My big question for you is email. Even when you finally leave and you can go to your kids’ sporting event, it’s nonstop. What’s your secret to success? How do you guys manage that?

We do have some that are inbox gurus. I am not that person. It’s not my personality type, but I agree. You have to stop and you have to time block the time for it. That’s something that’s been key for me. I started changing a lot of my meetings to 30- and 45-minute meetings, and that was one of the suggestions during our meeting. You can usually probably get something done quicker and more efficiently in that time period.

If you switch it to a 30 or 45-minute meeting, giving yourself a break, one 15 minutes to have a moment if you need it, but then maybe another 15 minutes to check periodically throughout the day with the emails, then you have a plan. One of the things I offered it too is that a lot of people have that nighttime catching up and I’m guilty of it, but I’m delaying them until the next day.

One of my business coaches suggested to me is to don’t make that the first thing that I do when I come in. If you are coming in, you are coming into everybody else’s that they have placed on you. You need to time block your first thing in the day what you need to get taken care of. What is your one thing? What is the most important thing that you need at that time?

 

Set your email time for a little bit later so that you can get back to people. Usually, it’s not the end of the world. That’s how people are like, “It’s the end of the world. You better be calling and texting me.” Email is not going to be that communication. It’s going to be informational and it’s going to be something that will get to you, but call or text us if it’s an emergency. In the mortgage business, sometimes we have those situations, but don’t let email control you. Control it and use it in that sense.

That is a challenging one because email is in our pocket. It vibrates. It’s now on my phone and my watch. I get it. We have to find a way to balance this. I was talking to another client and I challenged them on this very thing. They are going to read this episode. I’m going to make sure that’s their homework. The two partners are there. There’s one younger and he’s got small kids and the other one’s kids are growing up.

He says as I do, “Live with regrets.” I was at all of my kids’ events and trying my best to do it, but guess where my eyes were. They are in that device. I say, “Great touchdown, son. That was awesome.” He goes, “You couldn’t have seen it because I did it. I no longer ran it and I looked up at the stands and your face was in your cell phone. You didn’t see it.” I can’t shake those words. I’m still trying to rebuild. You don’t have those moments back again.

The kids are so perceptive. That’s the thing. I was the daughter of an entrepreneur, and that’s why it’s so important because your children are only young ones. Even if you don’t have children, if it’s even your pet or your friends, life is too short and you work too hard, but you have to find that balance and get out from behind the fear.

This is one of my favorite topics for that very reason. It’s about relationships. This is a relationship-driven business. Let’s shift the focus as we wrap this up. Let’s talk about what your advice would be to other companies and to other leaders to improve their own culture and their employees’ work-life balance.

Look at your culture and what makes you happy as a leader, and you have to start there. If it’s not the culture of the company because it’s all about driving the process or growth exponentially, look at that and see if that is the culture and you are in the right place or if you can instrument some change. If you have good people and you care about them like where they can feel that, and it’s not just saying that but you are living it, then it will all come. The growth will come because people will be attracted. They will hear about it. Your loan officers will start talking about it. Your operations team members and your corporate team members will be talking about that. They will be telling their friends and these qualified people who want to come be a part of that culture.

 

I even remember a few years ago when they approached me about taking over sales into the position I was in. I had started dating my husband. He lived six hours away from me. I was looking at my career and wanting to take this advancement, but I was like, “I need to be able to have flexibility and I’d like to have the ability to be traveling back and forth.” They were like, “If you feel like you can do it, then do it, and if you can keep that balance.” That was one of the questions they even asked me at that time.

You have to make sure you are doing that with your employees and say, “You may have this rockstar that you are trying to push, but how can you help them in their career that makes sure that they are living their best life?” You can figure it out and it can work, but it has to start with you as leaders. If your loan officers out there reading, it’s got to start with you. I know that it’s scary to set those boundaries, but if you have good expectations and good systems, your realtor partners love you and they will respect that.

I had one tell me that they want to shift to partners who understand that they have two young children because they are working with people who also have young children. They get that. Whereas maybe some people are at a different stage of your life and don’t respect that. You have to choose and find the people you are working with who share those same values, and you can do that as an originator too.

I’m getting barrage with some emails. “Please give us Emily’s email address. I work for a company that not only does not practice this. It’s the antithesis of this. I have to get with a company like this.” “I was told I could not go to my son’s soccer game because we had an important meeting and, ‘Where are your priorities?’” The stories that are pouring in. You are hitting a nerve with a lot of people out there. This is going to be a deciding advantage for companies that want to grow and prosper. It’s going to make a difference.

That meeting can be rescheduled. You care about your teammates and they are important members. Sometimes, that’s the thing you have to realize too. You may have missed something. Some things have to go down in a company and you are going to make that decision to step away because it’s the best thing for you and your family.

If you have good teammates around you, you can have a buddy system and say, “You tell me what I missed and will you brief me on it because I can’t be there.” You have to back each other up. Leaders out there or others, I would be glad to share anything that we do and give any advice about what’s worked and what hasn’t.

Kudos again for the job you have done on building a great company culture. I watched how Bill Cosgrove handled it when Alice went through some major health issues. I have always respected Bill. It warmed my heart. Alice, I will let you add anything you want to add then get over to you, Allen, as we wrap this up for the day.

They were amazing and everything that you know we have talked about now. I know at Union Home, we strive for the same things for our partners that we are here for them and you have a backup. I love what you said, Emily, about a buddy system. I wrote that one for that FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out, “If I miss the meeting, I’m either going to get delegated or I’m going to do something that I wish I was there for.” I love the buddy system. Bill and the team were fabulous for me. I’m grateful for my health and more than ever focused on quality of life and this balance.

You guys have a great company and you do an amazing job there. Now with technology, we are doing so much virtually. Record it and watch it later. That has to happen sometimes because of the nature of scheduling. You may be in a conflict. There are a lot of things that you can do.

Allen, having three daughters and all the cheerleading events you go through, I’m sure you have some notes going, but I will let you wrap it up as well. Any last comments?

I wanted to accentuate a point that you made, Emily. Number one, 100% being able to leave the office. Last 2020 has shown that everyone can leave the office. Nobody has to be tied down. We are not doctors performing surgery. Even they get to go out. They schedule their surgeries. At the end of the day, we all seem to conform to these one-hour Zoom meetings.

It is funny you said 30 or 45 minutes. I always schedule mine if I can for 50 minutes because they usually go a couple of minutes over and then I get a couple of minutes before the next call because I’m late to every call. You are ending one and jumping to the other. If we all started doing that, it would make a very big difference as far as our mindset moving into each meeting as well. You get a minute to think about what you need to talk about. That’s probably my biggest takeaway from everything you said.

Thank you. Managing a calendar is a whole other topic. You can give yourself that grace. I even color-coded all of mine. You have to leave those gaps to make sure that you can be prepared. You have to respect everyone else’s time, too, and I was doing the same thing. If I’m late to a meeting, I show them that their time was not as valuable or that’s not the message I want to give. That can be irritating and starting on the right foot. Thank you.

You've got to leave those gaps to make sure that you can be prepared. Click To Tweet

This has been good. You should see the comments coming in. It is one of the best episodes you have done. I need to have this played for my executive team who become one of the business owners. We have to stress this. I am embarrassed that I have not modeled this, but kudos to you, guys. Congratulations on being named the number one best large mortgage company to work for in the nation. It’s a real honor and we are blessed to have you here. I’m so glad.

Thank you so much. It was wonderful and I appreciate you having me on.

I’m a little blessed because I get to start coaching Emily. She’s becoming a new client. I get to talk to her every week. I’m so excited about it. It’s an honor. Coaching winners is such a joy. Folks, we have had Emily Farley with us, the Chief Lending Officer for Atlantic Bay Mortgage, the number one best large mortgage company to work for in the United States. Thank you, Emily, for being here. I’m excited to continue our conversation. We have to have you back. We have a sequel being requested already.

Thank you.

The comments continue to pour in on this show. You hit a nerve and a positive way. Many people are crying out for that. Get ahold of this episode. Share it, folks. You can share this. I believe this will be one of the biggest downloaded episodes as it’s getting shared around a lot, especially when it’s 10X of any other comments we have on the show.

Next episode, we have Camelia Martin, Head of Industry and Regulatory Affairs, and Amy Moses, Senior Field Marketing Manager of Snapdocs. Snapdocs has something going on. I can’t wait. I got invited to get to know them and their company. I’m very excited to have both Camelia and Amy. You will not be bored with that interview at all. Camelia got an abundance of energy. I will never forget when I first met her at one of the conferences. We hadn’t harassed each other. We were laughing so hard. It’s going to be a great interview. You are going to enjoy it. Both she and Amy are going to be wonderful.

I want to say a special thank you as we wrap this up to our sponsors, Finastra, CMLA, Indecomm, Insellerate, MobilityMMI, Modex, MBA, The Knowledge Coop, Lenders One, and Mortgage Collaborative. Thank you, everyone. Have a great week. I look forward to having you back here next episode. Have a blessed one.

 

Important Links

• Atlantic Bay Mortgage
• IndustrySyndicate.com
• Mortgage Coach
• Watson Mortgage
• Black Knight
• Mortgage Bankers Association
• National Association of REALTORS
• Lenders One
• The Mortgage Collaborative
• Community Mortgage Lenders of America
• Indecomm
• Insellerate.com
• The Knowledge Coop
• Mobility MMI
• Modex
• Union Home
• Snapdocs
• Finastra