The road to industry acclaim and reliability is fraught with challenges on multiple levels, mortgage veteran says
Nearly a decade and a half in the mortgage business has sharpened the industry acumen of Caroline Roach (pictured), mortgage planner at the BC-based Fitzwilliam Mortgage Corp. arm of The Mortgage Centre.
“I’ve been licensed for almost 12 years now; however, I was doing admin work for the brokerage before getting my license, so I’ve been in the industry for almost 15 years,” Roach told Canadian Mortgage Professional. “I’ve been with The Mortgage Centre the whole time. The head office team both out in Ontario and here in BC are amazing and I am incredibly proud to be a part of the network.”
For Roach, working in finance runs in the blood.
“Growing up, my father was a realtor,” Roach said. “[However], after my mother had a devastating illness that resulted in weeks in ISCU and an amputation, he left real estate. I think in a way he blamed his demanding career for what happened, however irrational that is. After a brief stint doing crime prevention, he got back into real estate but this time as a mortgage broker.”
However, this formative experience proved to be an early deterrent for Roach.
“Although I always loved real estate, while I was attending Vancouver Island University and getting my degree in business, I swore up and down that I would never be either a realtor or mortgage broker,” Roach said. “Not because I didn’t like the industry, but because I was young and rebellious and determined to forge my own path. Then life threw me a curve ball: a baby boy.”
Juggling the prospect of parenthood while building a career and completing a university degree was a major test of endurance for Roach, but she said that she eventually proved equal to these challenges.
“I wrote the exam when my son was about six months old, passed, and hung my license under the brokerage that my father was licensed under,” Roach said. “Now, 12 years later, my father, John Woods, and I, along with John Salem (who owned Essex and Kent where I first hung my license) are partners at Fitzwilliam Mortgage Corp.”
Roach said that while she might have previously vowed not to enter the mortgage business, she is ultimately grateful that she did.
“This business has given me the freedom and flexibility to be at home with my son while also building a career,” Roach said. “A lot of people say that you cannot be part-time in this industry, and for some that may be true, but for me it was the perfect solution. He turned 12 this year, and yes, he calls me a workaholic, but I tried really hard to manage my volume growth so that it grew along with him.”
Over the past year, the main challenge for Roach was managing her stress levels, “not from a workflow perspective (Velocity is amazing when it comes to tools for streamlining your business) but from a client-management perspective.”
“The more files you have, the more opportunities there are for fires on files,” Roach said. “I am an incredibly empathetic person and I care so much about my clients and their outcomes – maybe a little too much, so I take it personally.”
However, while the personal approach is crucial to building rapport with clients and lending partners alike, Roach said that moderation is still key, as is true in every aspect of life.
“I actually had a horrible panic attack last month that reinforced for me that I have to set better boundaries,” Roach said. “I once heard [podcaster] Scott Peckford say that his mantra is, ‘I didn’t create the problem, I’m just here to help.’” That runs through my head daily now. I’ve stepped up my personal rituals, more exercise, meditation, yoga, and completely disconnecting from my phone and email when I’m not on the clock.”
This helps remove much of the added stress in propping oneself up as what a broker “ought to be,” Roach said.
“The most important lesson that I have learned so far is to be yourself,” Roach said. “When I first started, out I had this image of who I had to be to be successful in this industry. That I had to put on a strictly business persona: high heels, fancy clothes, and always trying to look like I had it all together and figured out.”
“I did a lot of soul searching and realized that I just have to show up as me,” Roach said. “People want to do business with people they can relate to, and the only way to build real trust is to be vulnerable. So now I show up as me: a little hippy, a little hot-mess mom, but 100% real. Since making that change and accepting the vulnerability, my volume has been growing at a steady rate of at least 30-50% each year. I love my clients and I wouldn’t be able to connect with them on the level that I do if I didn’t show up as me, flaws included.”
