Ryan Grant's evolution as an originator has elevated his team above the lowest-rate-possible fray
Ryan Grant, like most originators who get into the mortgage space in their early 20s, did so by accident. During the summer before he was set to enter law school, Grant received a call from a friend who had a) recently stumbled into the industry himself and b) made a pile of cash.
“I had two questions,” Grant says. “One, what’s a mortgage, and two, where do I sign up?”
And just like that, it was “bye, bye law school.”
Grant has been on a steep, upward trajectory ever since. At 21, he started his career as a call center drone. Three years later, he was a regional manager for SB Financial preparing to launch his own brokerage. Now, as head of the Ryan Grant Team and a Senior Vice President for Fairway Mortgage, he is consistently recognized as one of the country’s top originators.
But it wasn’t until he almost walked away from the industry entirely in 2011 that things started falling into place. His father, rather than see his son leave a career in which he was thriving, suggested he start approaching real estate agents directly as a means of attracting business. For an originator who had never done a purchase, never met a realtor and had yet to leverage a CRM or establish a database, it was a shocking proposition.
“No one ever taught me how to do the business,” Grant says. “I had always thought, ‘the phone rings, you answer it, you sell someone a refinance.’ That was my experience.”
In March of 2011, despite his six years in the business, Grant felt like a rookie. His solution was to outwork everyone in his path. He began attending every open house and networking event he could find and tried to sponsor anything big enough to fit his name on.
It was a simple formula, but it worked. In his first year with imortgage, Grant did $11 million in business. At the end of his third year, he had pushed it to $98 million.
“I look back and I think, ‘How the hell did I do that?’ because I really wasn’t doing anything different than anyone else. I didn’t have great customer service. I didn’t have a great client experience. I didn’t have any special programs. I was just around.”
Service matters, but value matters more
Providing customer service beyond what most homebuyers take for granted had never been necessary for Grant’s business to thrive. But in 2014, when rate-shopping suddenly became the new norm, he turned his attention to filling the only obvious gap his business.
After ploughing a seemingly endless stream of resources into improving his team’s customer service offerings, Grant is confident that they now provide the best customer service platform in the country, one that allows clients to experience the joy of being a homeowner.
Modelled on the concierge service offered by outfits like Four Seasons and Nordstrom, Grant’s team dials in completely to each client’s desires, from the music that plays when they walk into the office to the gifts the company provides. But it’s not just a matter of presents and presentations. Grant says education is priority one, and that every client is met with at least three times before a transaction comes to a close.
Grant’s Realtor partners and their clients loved the new direction. As a result, the company was doing around $130 million in business annually at the time of the margin compression that smacked the lolly out of the industry’s mouth in 2017.
“It was a rapid race to the bottom, where everybody had to be the cheapest because rates, for the first time, weren’t going down. They were flat and actually starting to move up,” Grant says.
Rather than follow the herd and turn his back on a customer service approach that had been an undisputed home run, Grant doubled down and created the Art of Homeownership program. Rather than encouraging potential client to chase the lowest rate, Grant’s team would provide an even greater level of value, one that helps homeowners get the most out of their precious assets.
“A real estate agent gives someone the largest asset they have in their life – the house – which is really a liability because it’s not income producing,” says Grant. “Then we come and give them an actual, tangible liability in the mortgage, which is the largest one they’ll have in their lives. Then we both just say, ‘Good luck, man! Hope you know what you’re doing. We’re going to market to you, send you some flyers, maybe call you on your birthday.’ And we wonder why people aren’t successful.”
The program offers clients a wealth of resources, including annual financial reviews, a home concierge service, relocation technology and real estate wealth digests. Sharing it with consumers has reinvigorated Grant, who is proud to say he now does more than simply sell debt.
“Our commitment is to help [clients] manage that asset at a high level because most people don’t understand home maintenance and upkeep. We’re going to help them actually increase the value of that asset over time,” he says.
Buying a home, can be easy: a little credit, a little money, a little time. The next part – the hardest part, the longest part – is where Grant and his team will be grinding it out until fate steps in and the next stage in their evolution is required.
