Divorced, young and with kids, one broker has redefined herself
Danielle Olbrantz (pictured) is a study in perseverance.
She owned a brokerage firm back in 2004 when she was “…young and going through a divorce,” she told Mortgage Professional America in a telephone interview. Her office closed down amid the subprime mortgage crisis, not knowing what the future held. Yet she was no stranger to the industry, having started at World Savings as a processor in 1999 at the tender age of 18.
But after the mortgage meltdown, she felt truly alone – a single mom of two young children.
Amid the darkness of uncertainty, the light of love emerged. She met her husband, Paul Olbrantz, and the couple bought a house together in 2013. At the time, Danielle, said, he was a loan officer at Wells Fargo. “Once we bought a house, we realized we should work together but we couldn’t find the right fit. Everything was promised to us while we were being recruited.”
The couple landed at Cross Country Mortgage – she as a branch manager and he as a loan officer – but found themselves doing little work. “We closed no loans, and it was really scary and terrifying,” she said. “The rates weren’t competitive. It was very pitiful. In the end we were in trouble with them because they said we had underpriced too many loans. We kind of got our hands slapped.”
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That’s when she turned to another man in her life, the life coach Tony Robbins, of which both she and her husband were followers. “After we walked on fire coals, we decided we had the courage to try anything,” she said, not speaking figuratively but literally. Robbins has incorporated the practice of firewalking in his seminars, during which people walk across coals – rather than running, which only digs the feet further into the embers in risking serious burns. The practice dates to Iron Age India circa 1200 BC, and is viewed by some as a rite of passage testing an individual’s strength and courage or, in religion, a test of one’s faith.
“We came home from the event, quit our jobs and had no plan,” she said. “I had my broker’s license since 2005. Other than that, we had no plan and just kind of dove in.”
Learn the steps to get a US mortgage broker license in this article.
Soon, the California-based husband-and-wife team would form Close2Close Processors and Close2Close Brokers, with her running the former while her husband operated the latter. The company is based in Novato, Calif., some 28 miles north of San Francisco.
“And suddenly, business went up and we got very busy,” she recalled. But it wasn’t all rosy: “For the first several months, we felt very alone. We felt like we were on an island all by ourselves,” she said. “We were lucky that we were so busy getting so many loans.”
But the isolation of the work began to wear on her. She looked for collegiality, turning to the Brokers Are Better Facebook page. “It was the missing link for us,” she said. With support and advice from the group, “My little processing firm grew from one processor to seven processors,” she reported.
What a difference from their Cross Country Mortgage experience, where they spent just nine months before cutting their losses. Last year, they posted $189 million in loan production from some 345 units – her husband originating loans and she taking care of the mortgage loan processing side of things. “Last year was our finding-out-who-we-are year,” she said with palpable enthusiasm.
“We got flooded,” she said of the company’s growth. “The processing company grew as a necessity.” She credits a strong work ethic for the success. “We don’t want to sell something if we don’t think it’s the best.”
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She also credits AIME (Association of Independent Mortgage Experts) for providing much-needed direction (“I was so clueless,” she said of her earlier forays into the industry). “I was able to build connections with lenders,” she said of her experiences after joining AIME. “The biggest thing is the sense of community. When you’re a very small broker like we are it’s very isolating. Having that community for me has been very helpful. I’ve made friends there, and I have people I can bounce ideas off of,” she said of fellow California brokers that have dubbed themselves the California Mastermind Group. “California is a weird market, and it’s nice being able to have a community of brokers.”
She and husband Paul now are able to balance work life with family after shaky beginnings. They each brought two children into the relationship, with their four kids now ranging from 16 to 20. “When I was a single mom, I had to support my kids on my own,” she said, noting how uncertain times are now passed. “Obviously, there is great income opportunity in this industry, and I get to give back. And we love our clients.”
