In a new episode of “The Loan Officer Podcast,” host Dustin Owen chats with John Cornish of Iowa-based Key Mortgage Group about his path into the industry, tips for scaling a mortgage lending business and how to avoid stagnation as a loan originator.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
To kick off the conversation, Cornish explores his background before entering the mortgage lending industry. Cornish started his career in mortgage banking at Wells Fargo in Iowa in 2003.
Cornish: It was a great time. There’s a huge value in me getting into the mortgage industry, as it imploded around that time. I didn’t have any choice but to succeed.
Cornish also dives into his experience at a local Iowa bank after leaving Wells Fargo following the post-housing crisis industry changes in 2008.
Cornish: The first couple of years, everybody talked about how things used to be. I can’t believe we have to verify income. I can’t believe we don’t have this program. I never had those at Wells Fargo Financial, so that kind of helped me out. I just put my head down and worked. I knew I had to figure it out.
Owen: How long did it take before you were consistently generating leads and consistently funding four or five transactions a month?
Cornish: Don’t quote me on the exact year, but I think I made $19 million in 2008. It was over 100 units. When I sold competitive products, the sales portion of it felt really easy. Before, I wasn’t making friends with clients. But I wanted to create a referral-based business, so the transition was easy, and I talked to as many people as I could.
Owen: I mentioned plateauing. You had a point in your career where you were working 80 hours a week. You went from doing $17 million or $19 million in your first full year to consistently doing about $40 million a year. What changed?
Cornish: I had $40 million. I was making enough money to support my family. There was nothing that was really broken, but I knew I wanted more and I knew I was handcuffed by the place that I was working for. That was the first thing. So, within 90 to 120 days, I was out of the banking world and opened up my own branch of an independent mortgage company, which was kind of new to our market.
The conversation ends with Cornish discussing his outlook for 2025 and beyond for the mortgage industry as a whole and his own business in particular.
Owen: What’s exciting you about 2025 into the 2030s?
Cornish: Because the last two years have been extremely hard and I’ve created a more disciplined version of myself, I’ve grown my business when most people’s business went down. From an individual standpoint, my team is as dialed up as it has ever been. And I know that I can continue to grow this, and I get satisfaction out of getting the most I can out of my potential.
I learned by burning my hand on the stove multiple times. It’s a constant evolution. I can help you do it right quicker, because I made mistakes myself so that you don’t have to learn from my mistakes.
