Rocket Pro EVP discusses set of philosophies that are key to the company's success story
Rocket Pro TPO wouldn’t be the mortgage behemoth that it is today without its ISMs – a set of principles created by the company’s founder Dan Gilbert. These philosophies, which essentially serve as a decision-making guide across the organization, are what made Austin Niemiec fall in love with Rocket’s culture.
Niemiec, executive vice president of Rocket Pro TPO, sat down with MPA news editor Richard Torne in an interview to talk about how these ideals shape the company’s culture and help it stay ahead as a lender.
“We’re a big company, with 30,000 folks across America. To think that we can teach everybody how to make the right decision at the moment – we can’t. It’s not scalable,” Niemiec said. “But if you can teach principles, philosophies, if everyone’s looking at the world through the business from the same lens, they will make the right decisions on their own. They don’t need to be micromanaged or have someone looking over their shoulder and the principles we call our ISMs. They’re unbelievable for business, and they’re things we’ve learned over almost 40 years, but they’re still applicable to real life.”
One of his favorites, Niemiec shared, is that ‘numbers and money follow; they do not lead.’
“I think what you see is a lot of people just obsess over the money and the numbers, and it’s what they think about all the time. How can I get rich, or they stare at spreadsheets, and that’s what they start with. So they spend most of their time thinking about the money and the numbers. And then those types of people typically don’t make money, or they don’t,” he said.
“The numbers have problems like knowledge, building a culture, getting in the trenches with your team members, understanding what they’re going through and making changes, innovation. Creativity, audacity, and leadership development. If you relentlessly focus on that stuff, you’ll wake up and turn around, ‘oh my goodness, the numbers are moving up.’ They’ll follow very, very fast.”
Want to learn more about Rocket’s ISMs and how you can utilize them to grow your own business? Watch Niemiec’s full interview here: How to stay ahead as a lender.
