What have been the keys to her success?
Jamie Cavanaugh (pictured) credits adaptability as one of the keys to her success. Yet it’s one of many traits that has landed her on the Mortgage Global 100 list – a select group of professionals recognized not only for personal success but their impact on the industry as a whole.
The is the result of extensive research by Mortgage Professional America and its sister publications around the world. Cavanaugh was included in those rarefied ranks, one of only 24 US professionals so honored.
Cavanaugh, president of California-based Amerifund Home Loans, took time to chat with MPA on the heels of making the list. Aside from her business success, Cavanaugh has made a further impact on the industry as vice president of outreach at the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts (AIME).
The path to the top ranks wasn’t always smooth, Cavanaugh suggested during a telephone interview. A company she worked with in the early years succumbed to the Great Recession of 2008, yielding some hard lessons along the way.
“In my earlier years it was all about the stability and the comfort zone,” she acknowledged. “When the crash hit and I had to close a company down and I had to lay off people I cared deeply about, it humbled me in a way I’ve held on to ever since. And it also taught me that nothing is ever certain.”
That truth – as tough a pill to swallow as it might be – actually had an empowering effect, Cavanaugh suggested. “There’s a saying that it’s not the strongest that survive but those most adaptable to change. I started to learn how to adapt to changes that would come in life and business in the course of the years that followed. All of sudden when you’re not afraid of change anymore and you believe you can overcome everything that comes at you, you start to have some really cool, creative ideas and you start to think bigger. When you think bigger and you’re not afraid and know that if you fall you’re going to get up again, it changes everything.”
Pivoting into an epiphany
That was the defining moment: “That is truly what pivoted me from what I would call a manager into a leader, an employee into an entrepreneur. That was really the moment, but I wouldn’t know that for many years until the opportunity presented itself to me.”
That opportunity came in 2014. By then she was four years into a post-closing government insuring manager’s role at Prospect Mortgage LLC after having run the foreclosure division for Bank of America. Her old business partner, Brad Rice, approached her about rejoining him in a new venture – Amerifund Home Loans.
“I ditched my comfy executive corporate job and bet it all on Brad Rice as I had done before,” she said. “I got my feet back in the origination business.”
By 2019, her value to the company as a top producer prompted Rice to promote her to full-fledged partner and the role of company president.
Where the real success lies
She mused on her success during her interview with MPA but added that the main motivator was not profit but the opportunity to help people – something she does in her dual roles at Amerifund and AIME.
“I was able to be highly successful as an originator – I had several $100 million-plus years personally – but then it became less about my personal achievement and it became what I was doing with it. I was very fortunate to be involved with AIME – which I still am – which gave me a lot of visibility in our space. What’s so important to remember is it doesn’t matter how many eyes are on you or what people think of you. It matters what you do with the influence you’ve been gifted with.”
How does that manifest itself in her professional life? “In my world that means that it’s important to help other people because I have been through many market cycles, and I am still standing – and I will be on the other side of this one,” she said of the current market slowdown amid higher rates and inflation. “I’d like to have as many of my friends and colleagues standing there on the other side with me as possible. I like to help people understand and believe that they can withstand and overcome the market.”
It’s little wonder she made the cut.
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